 CHAPTER IV The weather today, upon the whole, is very fine, warm, but from a smart rain last night, fresh enough, and no dust, which is a great relief for this city. I saw the parade about noon, Pennsylvania Avenue, from 15th Street down toward the capital. There were three regiments of infantry. I suppose the one's doing patrol duty here, two or three societies of odd fellows, a lot of children in barouches, and a squad of policemen. A useless imposition upon the soldiers. They have worked enough on their backs without piling of the like of this. As I went down the avenue, I saw a big, flaring placard on the bulletin board of a newspaper office announcing, Glorious Victory for the Union Army. Mead had fought Lee at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, yesterday and day before, and repulsed him most signally, taken three thousand prisoners, etc. I afterwards saw Mead's despatch, very modest, and a sort of order of the day from the President himself, quite religious, giving thanks to the Supreme and calling on the people to do the same. I walked on to the Armory Hospital, took along with me several bottles of Blackberry and Cherry syrup, good and strong but innocent, went through several of the wards, announced to the soldiers the news from Mead, and gave them all a drink of the syrup with ice water, quite refreshing, prepared it all myself and served it around. Meanwhile the Washington bells are ringing their sundown pills for Fourth of July, and the usual fusillads of boys' pistols, crackers, and guns. A Cavalry Camp I am riding this nearly sundown, watching a cavalry company, acting signal service, just come in through a shower, making their night's camp ready on some broad vacant ground, a sort of hill in full view opposite my window. There are the men in their yellow striped jackets. All are dismounted, the freed horses stand with drooping heads and wet sides. They are to be let off presently in groups to water. The little wall tents and shelter tents spring up quickly. I see the fires already blazing, and pots and kettles over them. Some among the men are driving in tent poles, wielding their axes with strong, slow blows. I see great huddles of horses, bundles of hay, groups of men, some with unbuckled sabers yet on their sides, a few officers, piles of wood, the flames of the fires, saddles, harness, etc. The smoke streams upward, additional men arrive and dismount, some drive in stakes and tie their horses to them, some go with buckets for water, some are chopping wood and so on. July 6th A steady rain, dark and thick and warm. A train of six mule wagons has just passed bearing pontoons, great square end flatboats, and the heavy planking for overlaying them. We hear that the Potomac above here is flooded, and are wondering whether Lee will be able to get back across again, or whether Mead will indeed break him to pieces. The cavalry camp on the hill is a ceaseless field of observation for me. This forenoon there stand the horses, tethered together, dripping, steaming, chewing their hay. The men emerge from their tents, dripping also. The fires are half quenched. July 10th Still the camp opposite, perhaps fifty or sixty tents. Some of the men are cleaning their sabers, pleasant to-day. Some brushing boots, some laying off, reading, writing. Some cooking, some sleeping. On long, temporary cross-sticks back of the tents are cavalry accoutrements. Blankets and overcoats are hung out to air. There are the squads of horses tethered, feeding, continually stamping and whisking their tails to keep off flies. I sit long in my third-story window and look at the scene. A hundred little things going on, peculiar objects connected with the camp that could not be described, any one of them justly, without much minute drawing and coloring in words. A New York Soldier This afternoon, July 22nd, I have spent a long time with Oscar F. Wilbur, Company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhea and a bad wound also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied and asked him what I should read. He said, Make your own choice. I opened at the close of one of the first books of the Evangelists and read the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ and the scenes at the crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man asked me to read the following chapter also, How Christ Rows Again. I read very slowly, for Oscar was feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He asked me if I enjoyed religion. I said, Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you mean, and yet maybe it is the same thing. He said, It is my chief reliance. He talked of death and said he did not fear it. I said, Why Oscar, don't you think you will get well? He said, I may, but it is not probable. He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad. It discharged much. Then the diarrhea had prostrated him and I felt that he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly and affectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving he returned fourfold. He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilbur, Allegheny Post Office, Catterogus County, New York. I had several such interviews with him. He died a few days after the one just described. Homemade Music. August 8. Tonight, as I was trying to keep cool, sitting by a wounded soldier in Armory Square, I was attracted by some pleasant singing in an adjoining award. As my soldier was asleep, I left him, and entering the ward where the music was, I walked halfway down and took a seat by the cot of a young Brooklyn friend, S. R., badly wounded in the hand at Chancellorsville, and who has suffered much. But at that moment in the evening was wide awake and comparatively easy. He had turned over on his left side to get a better view of the singers, but the mosquito-curtains of the adjoining cots obstructed the sight. I stepped round and looped them all up, so that he had a clear show, and then sat down again by him, and looked and listened. The principal singer was a young lady nurse of one of the wards, accompanying, on a melodian, and joined by the lady nurses of other wards. They sat there, making a charming group with their handsome healthy faces and standing up a little behind them were some ten or fifteen of the convalescent soldiers, young men, nurses, etc., with books in their hands singing. Of course it was not such a performance as the great soloists at the New York Opera House take a hand in. Yet I am not sure, but I received as much pleasure under the circumstances sitting there as I have had from the best Italian compositions expressed by world-famous performers. The men lying up and down the hospital in their cots, some badly wounded, some never to rise thence, the cots themselves with their drapery of white curtains, and the shadows down the lower and upper parts of the ward, then the silence of the men and the attitudes they took. The whole was a sight to look around upon again and again. And there sweetly rose the voices up to the high whitewashed wooden roof, and pleasantly the roof sent it all back again. They sang very well, mostly quaint old songs and declamatory hymns, to fitting tunes. Here, for instance, my days are swiftly gliding by, and I, a pilgrim-stranger, would not detain them as they fly, those hours of toil and danger. For, oh, we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing over, and just before the shining shore we may almost discover. We'll gird our loins, my brethren dear, our distant home discerning. Our absent Lord has left us word, let every lamp be burning. For, oh, we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing over, and just before the shining shore we may almost discover. Abraham Lincoln August 12th I see the President almost every day, as I happen to live where he passes to or from his lodgings out of town. He never sleeps at the White House during the hot season, but has quarters at a healthy location some three miles north of the city, the soldier's home, a United States military establishment. I saw him this morning about 8.30 coming into business, riding on Vermont Avenue, near L. Street. He always has a company of twenty-five or thirty cavalry, with sabers drawn and held upright over their shoulders. They say this guard was against his personal wish, but he let his counselors have their way. The party makes no great show in uniform or horses. Mr. Lincoln, on the saddle, generally rides a good-sized, easygoing gray horse, is dressed in plain black, somewhat rusty and dusty, wears a stiff black hat and looks about as ordinary in attire, etc., as the commonest man. A lieutenant with yellow straps rides at his left, and, following behind, two by two, come the cavalrymen in their yellow striped jackets. They are generally going at a slow trot, as that is the pace set them by the one they wait upon. The sabers and accoutrements clank, and the entirely unornamental cortege, as it trots towards Lafayette Square, arouses no sensation, only some curious stranger stops and gazes. I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face, with the deep cut lines, the eyes always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. We have got so that we exchange bows and very cordial ones. Sometimes the President goes and comes in an open barouche. The cavalry always accompany him, with drawn sabers. Often I notice as he goes out evenings, and sometimes in the morning, when he returns early, he turns off and halts at the large and handsome residence of the Secretary of War on K. Street, and holds conference there. If in his barouche I can see from my window he does not alight, but sits in his vehicle, and Mr. Stanton comes out to attend him. Sometimes one of his sons, a boy of ten or twelve, accompanies him, riding at his ride on a pony. Earlier in the summer I occasionally saw the President and his wife toward the latter part of the afternoon, out in a barouche, on a pleasure ride through the city. Mrs. Lincoln was dressed in complete black, with a long crepe veil. The equipage is of the plainest kind, only two horses, and they nothing extra. They passed me once very close, and I saw the President in the face fully, as they were moving slowly, and his look, though abstracted, happened to be directed steadily in my eye. He bowed and smiled, but far beneath his smile I noticed well in the expression I have alluded to. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. There is something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed. Heated term. There has lately been much suffering here from heat. We have had it upon us now eleven days. I go around with an umbrella and a fan. I saw two cases of sunstroke yesterday, one in Pennsylvania Avenue, and another in Seventh Street. The city railroad company looses some horses every day. Yet Washington is having a livelier August and is probably putting in a more energetic and satisfactory summer than ever before during its existence. There is probably more human electricity, more population to make it, more business, more light heartedness than ever before. The armies that swiftly circumambuated from Fredericksburg, marched, struggled, fought, had out their mighty clenching hurl at Gettysburg, wheeled, circumambiated again, returned to their ways, touching a snot, either at their going or coming. And Washington feels that she has passed the worst, perhaps feels that she is henceforth mistress. So here she sits with her surrounding hills spotted with guns, and is conscious of a character and identity different from what it was five or six short weeks ago, and very considerably pleasanter and prouder. Soldiers and Talks Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, you meet everywhere about the city, often superb-looking men, though invalids dressed in worn uniforms and carrying canes or crutches. I have often talks with them, occasionally quite long and interesting. One, for instance, will have been all through the peninsula under McClellan, narrates to me the fights, the marches, the strange quick changes of that eventful campaign, and gives glimpses of many things untold in any official reports or books or journals. These, indeed, are the things that are genuine and precious. The man was there, has been out two years, has been through a dozen fights, the superfluous flesh of talking has long worked off him, and he gives me little but the hard meat and sinew. I find it refreshing these hardy, bright, intuitive, American young men, experienced soldiers with all their youth. The vocal play and significance moves one more than books. Then there hangs something majestic about a man who has borne his part in battles, especially if he is very quiet regarding it when you desire him to unbuzz him. I am continually lost at the absence of blowing and blowers among these old, young American militaires. I have found some man or other who has been in every battle since the war began, and have talked with them about each one in every part of the United States, and many of the engagements on the rivers and harbors, too. I find men here from every state in the Union without exception. There are more Southerners, especially Border State men, in the Union Army than is generally supposed. I now doubt whether one can get a fair idea of what this war practically is, or what genuine America is, and her character, without some such experience as this I am having. DEATH OF A WISCONSAN OFFICER Another characteristic scene of that dark and bloody 1863, from notes of my visit to Armory Square Hospital, one hot but pleasant summer day. In Ward H. we approached the cot of a young lieutenant of one of the Wisconsin regiments. Tread the bare floorboard lightly here, for the pain and panting of death are in this cot. I saw the lieutenant when he was first brought here from Chancellorsville, and have been with him occasionally from day to day and night to night. He had been getting along pretty well till night before last, when a sudden hemorrhage that could not be stopped came upon him, and today it still continues at intervals. Notice that water-pail by the side of the bed, with a quantity of blood and bloody pieces of muslin nearly full that tells the story. The poor young man is struggling painfully for breath, his great dark eyes with a glaze already upon them, and the choking, faint but audible in his throat. An attendant sits by him and will not leave him till the last, yet little or nothing can be done. He will die here in an hour or two, without the presence of Kith or Ken. Meantime the ordinary chat and business of the ward a little way off goes on indifferently. Some of the inmates are laughing and joking, others are playing checkers or cards, others are reading, etc. I have noticed, through most of the hospitals, that as long as there is any chance for a man, no matter how bad he may be, the surgeon and nurses work hard, sometimes with curious tenacity, for his life, doing everything and keeping somebody by him to execute the doctor's orders, and minister to him every minute, day and night. See that screen there? As you advance through the dusk of early candlelight, a nurse will step forth on tiptoe, and silently but imperiously forbid you to make any noise, or perhaps to come near at all. Some soldier's life is flickering there, suspended between recovery and death. Perhaps at this moment the exhausted frame has just fallen into a light sleep that a step might shake. You must retire. The neighboring patients must move in their stocking feet. I've been several times struck with such marked efforts, everything bent to save a life from the very grip of the destroyer. But when that grip is once firmly fixed, leaving no hope or chance at all, the surgeon abandons the patient. If it is a case where stimulus is any relief, the nurse gives milk-punch or brandy, or whatever is wanted, ad libitum. There is no fuss made. Not a bit of sentimentalism or whining have I seen about a single death bed in a hospital or on the field, but generally in passive indifference. All is over as far as any efforts can avail. It is useless to expend emotions or labors. While there is a prospect they strive hard, at least most surgeons do, but death's certain and evident they yield the field. Note. Mr. Garfield in the House of Representatives, April 15, 79. Do gentlemen know that, leaving out all the border states, there were fifty regiments and seven companies of white men in our army fighting for the union from the states that went into rebellion? Do they know that from the single state of Kentucky more Union soldiers fought under our flag than Napoleon took into the battle of Waterloo? More than Wellington took with all the allied armies against Napoleon? Do they remember that 186,000 colored men fought under our flag against the rebellion and for the union, and that of that number ninety thousand were from the states which went into rebellion? August, September, and October, 63. I am in the habit of going to all and to Fairfax Seminary, Alexandria, and over Longbridge, that great convalescent camp. The journals publish a regular directory of them, a long list. As a specimen of almost any one of the larger of these hospitals, you fancy to yourself a space of three to twenty acres of ground, on which are grouped ten or twelve very large wooden barracks, with perhaps a dozen or twenty, and sometimes more than that number, small buildings, capable altogether of accommodating from five hundred to a thousand or fifteen hundred persons. Sometimes these wooden barracks are wards, each of them perhaps from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet long, ranged in a straight row, evenly fronting the street, others are planned so as to form an immense V, and others again are ranged around a hollow square. They make altogether a huge cluster, with the additional tents, extra wards for contagious diseases, guardhouses, subtler stores, chaplains' house. In the middle will probably be an edifice devoted to the offices of the surgeon in charge and the ward surgeons, principal attachés, clerks, etc. The wards are either lettered alphabetically, ward G, ward K, or else numerically, one, two, three, etc. Each has its ward surgeon and core of nurses. Of course there is in the aggregate quite a muster of employees, and over all the surgeon in charge. Here in Washington, when these army hospitals are all filled, as they have been already several times, they contain a population more numerous in itself than the whole of Washington of ten or fifteen years ago. Within sight of the capital, as I write, there are some thirty or forty such collections, at times holding from fifty to seventy thousand men. Looking from any eminence and studying the topography in my rambles, I use them as landmarks. Through the rich, august-verdeur of the trees, I see that white group of buildings off yonder in the outskirts, then another cluster half a mile to the left of the first, then another a mile to the right, and another a mile beyond, and still another between us and the first. Indeed, we can hardly look in any direction, but these clusters are dotting the landscape and environs. That little town, as you might suppose it, off there, on the brow of the hill, is indeed a town, but of wounds, sickness, and death. It is Finley Hospital, northeast of the city, on Kendall Green, as it used to be called. That other is Campbell Hospital. Both are large establishments. I have known these two alone to have from two thousand to twenty-five hundred inmates. Then there is Carver Hospital, larger still, a walled and military city regularly laid out and guarded by squads of sentries. Again, off east, Lincoln Hospital, a still larger one, and half a mile further, Emory Hospital. Still sweeping the eye around the river towards Alexandria, we see to the right the locality where the convalescent camp stands, with its five, eight, or sometimes ten thousand inmates. Even all these are but a portion. The Harewood, Mount Pleasant, Armory Square, Judiciary Hospitals, are some of the rest and all large collections. A Silent Night Ramble. October 20. Tonight, after leaving the hospital at ten o'clock, I had been on self-imposed duty some five hours, pretty closely confined. I wandered a long time around Washington. The night was sweet, very clear, sufficiently cool, of voluptuous half-moon, slightly golden, the space near it of a transparent blue-gray tinge. I walked up Pennsylvania Avenue, and then to Seventh Street, and a long while around the Patent Office. Somehow it looked rebukingly strong, majestic, there in the delicate moonlight. The sky, the planets, the constellations all so bright, so calm, so expressively silent, so soothing after these hospital scenes. I wandered to and fro till the moist moon set long after midnight. I wandered to and fro till the moist moon set long after midnight. Every now and then, in hospital or camp, there are beings I meet, specimens of unworldliness, disinterestedness, and animal purity and heroism, perhaps some unconscious Indianan or from Ohio or Tennessee, on whose birth the calmness of Heaven seems to have descended, and whose gradual growing up, whatever the circumstances of work life or change or hardship, or small or no education that attended it, the power of a strange spiritual sweetness, fiber and inward health, have also attended. Something veiled and abstracted is often a part of the manners of these beings. I have met them, I say, not seldom in the army, in camp and in the hospitals. The western regiments contain many of them. They are often young men obeying the events and occasions about them, marching, soldiering, riding, foraging, cooking, working on farms or at some trade before the war, unaware of their own nature. As to that who is aware of his own nature, their companions only understanding that they are different from the rest, more silent, something odd about them, an apt to go off and meditate and muse in solitude. Cattle Droves About Washington Among other sites are immense droves of cattle with their drivers passing through the streets of the city. Some of the men have a way of leading the cattle by a peculiar call, a wild, pensive hoot, quite musical, longed, indescribable, sounding something between the cooing of a pigeon and the hoot of an owl. I like to stand and look at the sight of one of these immense droves, a little way off, as the dust is great. There are always men on horseback, cracking their whips and shouting. The cattle low. Some obstinate ox or steer attempts to escape. Then a lively scene. The mounted men, always excellent riders and on good horses, dash after the recusant, and wheel and turn. A dozen mounted drovers, their great, slouched, broad-brimmed hats, very picturesque, another dozen on foot, everybody covered with dust, long goads in their hands, an immense drove of perhaps one thousand cattle, the shouting, hooting, movement, et cetera. Hospital Perplexity To add to other troubles, amid the confusion of this great army of the sick, it is almost impossible for a stranger to find any friend or relative unless he has the patient's specific address to start upon. Besides the directory printed in the newspapers here, there are one or two general directories of the hospitals kept at Provost's headquarters, but they are nothing like complete. They are never up to date, and as things are, with the daily streams of coming and going and changing cannot be. I have known cases, for instance, such as a farmer coming here from Northern New York to find a wounded brother, faithfully hunting around for a week, and then compelled to leave and go home without getting any trace of him. When he got home he found a letter from the brother giving the right address. Down at the Front Culpepper, Virginia, February, 1864 Here I am front pretty well down toward the extreme front. Three or four days ago General S, who is now in Chief Command, I believe meat is absent, or sick, moved a strong force southward from camp as if intending business. They went to the Rapidin. There has since been some maneuvering and a little fighting, but nothing of consequence. The telegraphic accounts, given Monday morning last, make entirely too much of it, I should say. What General S intended, we here know not, but we trust in that competent commander. We were somewhat excited, but not so very much either, on Sunday, during the day and night, as orders were sent out to pack up and harness, and be ready to evacuate to fall backwards towards Washington. But I was very sleepy and went to bed. Some tremendous shouts arousing me during the night, I went forth and found it was from the men above mentioned, who were returning. I talked with some of the men. As usual I found them full of gaiety, endurance, and many fine little outshows, the signs of the most excellent good manliness of the world. It was a curious sight to see those shadowy columns moving through the night. I stood, unobserved in the darkness, and watched them long. The mud was very deep. The men had their usual burdens, overcoats, knapsacks, guns, and blankets. Along and along they filed by me, with often a laugh, a song, a cheerful word, but never once a murmur. It may have been odd, but I never before so realized the majesty and reality of the American people en masse. It fell upon me like a great awe. The strong ranks moved neither fast nor slow. They had marched seven or eight miles already through this slipping, unctious mud. The brave first corps stopped here. The equally brave third corps moved on to Brandy Station. The famous Brooklyn fourteenth are here, guarding the town. You see their red legs actively moving everywhere. Then they have a theater of their own here. They give musical performances, nearly everything done capitally. Of course the audience is a jam. It is good sport to attend one of these entertainments of the fourteenth. I like to look around at the soldiers and the general collection in front of the curtain more than the scene on the stage. Paying the Bounties One of the things to note here now is the arrival of the paymaster with his strong box and the payment of bounties to veterans re-enlisting. Major H. is here today, with a small mountain of green bats, rejoicing the hearts of the second division of the first corps. In the midst of a rickety shanty, behind a little table, sit the Major and Clerk Eldridge, with the rolls before them and much money. A re-enlisted man gets in cash about two hundred down, and heavy installments following as the paydays arrive one after another. The show of the men crowding around is quite exhilarating. I like to stand and look. They feel elated, their pockets full, and the ensuing furlough the visit home. It is a scene of sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks. The soldier has many gloomy and harsh experiences, and this makes up for some of them. Major H. is ordered to pay first all the re-enlisted men of the first corps their bounties and back-pay, and then the rest. To hear the peculiar sound of the rustling of the new and crisp green-bats by the hour, through the nimble fingers of the Major and my friend Clerk E. Rumors, changes, etc. About the excitement of Sunday, and the orders to be ready to start, I have heard since that the said orders came from some cautious minor commander, and that the high principalities knew not and thought not of any such move, which is likely. The rumour and fear here intimated a long circuit by Lee, and flank attack on our right. But I cast my eyes at the mud, which was then at its deepest and palmiest condition, and retired composedly to rest. Still it is about time for Culpeper to have a change. Authorities have chased each other here like clouds in a stormy sky. Before the first bull run this was the rendezvous in camp of instruction of the secession troops. I am stopping at the house of a lady who has witnessed all the eventful changes of the war, along this route of contending armies. She is a widow with a family of young children and lives here with her sister in a large, handsome house, a number of army officers bored with them. Virginia. Delapidated, fence-less, and trodden with war as Virginia is, wherever I move across her surface I find myself roused to surprise and admiration. What capacity for products, improvements, human life, nourishment, and expansion? Everywhere that I have been in the old dominion, the subtle mockery of that title now, such thoughts have filled me. The soil is yet far above the average of any of the northern states, and how full of breadth the scenery, everywhere distant mountains, everywhere convenient rivers. Even yet prodigal in forest woods, and surely eligible for all the fruits, orchards, and flowers. The skies and atmosphere most luscious, as I feel certain, for more than a year's residence in the state, and movements hither and yawn. I should say very healthy as a general thing. Then a rich and elastic quality, by night and by day. The sun rejoices in his strength, dazzling and burning, and yet to me never unpleasantly weakening. It is not the panting tropical heat, but invigorates. The north tempers it. The nights are often unsurpassable. Last evening, February 8, I saw the first of the new moon, the outlined old moon clear along with it, the sky and air so clear, such transparent hues of color it seemed to me I had never really seen the new moon before. It was the thinnest cut crescent possible. It hung delicate just above the sulky shadow of the blue mountains. Ah, if it might prove an omen and good prophecy for this unhappy state. Summer of 1864 I am back again in Washington on my regular duty in nightly rounds. Of course there are many specialties. Being a ward here and there are always cases of poor fellows, long suffering under obstinate wounds, or weak and disheartened from typhoid fever or the like, marked cases needing special and sympathetic nourishment. These I sit down and either talk to or silently cheer them up. They always like it hugely, and so do I. Each case has its peculiarities and needs some new adaptation. I have learnt to thus conform, learnt a good deal of hospital wisdom. Some of the poor young chaps, away from home for the first time in their lives, hunger and thirst for affection. This is sometimes the only thing that will reach their condition. The men like to have a pencil and something to write in. I have given them cheap pocket diaries and almanacs for 1864, underleaved with blank paper. For reading I generally have some old pictorial magazines or story papers. They are always acceptable. Also the morning or evening papers of the day. The best books I do not give, but lend to read through the wards and then take them to others and so on. They are very punctual about returning the books. In these wards or on the field, as I thus continue to go round, I have come to adapt myself to each emergency. After its kind or call, however trivial, however solemn, everyone justified and made real under its circumstances. Not only visits and cheering talk and little gifts. Not only washing and dressing wounds. I have met some cases where the patient is unwilling anyone should do this but me, but passages from the Bible, expounding them, prayer at the bedside, explanations of doctrine, etc. I think I see my friends smiling at this confession, but I was never more earnest in my life. In camp and everywhere I was in the habit of reading or giving recitations to the men. They were very fond of it and liked the clamatory poetical pieces. We would gather in a large group by ourselves, after supper, and spend the time in such readings or in talking, and occasionally by an amusing game called The Game of Twenty Questions. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of Specimen Days And out of all considerations, that the current military theory, practice, rules, and organizations, adopted from Europe from the feudal institutes with, of course, the modern improvements, largely from the French, though tacitly followed and believed in by the officers generally, are not at all consonant with the United States, nor our people, nor our days. What it will be I know not, but I know that as entire an abnegation of the present military system, and the naval too, and a building up from radically different root bases and centers appropriate to us, must eventually result, as that our political system has resulted and become established different from feudal Europe, and built up on itself from original, perennial, democratic premises. We have undoubtedly in the United States the greatest military power, an exhaustless, intelligent, brave, and reliable rank and file in the world, any land, perhaps all lands. The problem is to organize this in the manner fully appropriate to it, to the principles of the Republic, and to get the best service out of it. In the present struggle, as already seen and reviewed, probably three-fourths of the losses, men, lives, etc., have been sheer superfluity, extravagance, waste, death of a hero. I wonder if I could ever convey to another, to you, for instance, reader dear, the tender and terrible realities of such cases, many, many happened, as the one I am now going to mention. Stuart C. Glover, Company E. Fifth, Wisconsin, was wounded May Fifth in one of those fierce tussles of the wilderness, died May 21st, aged about twenty. He was a small and beardless young man, a splendid soldier, in fact almost an ideal American of his age. He had served nearly three years, and would have been entitled to his discharge in a few days. He was in Hancock's corps. The fighting had about ceased for the day, and the general commanding the brigade road-bind called for volunteers to bring in the wounded. Glover responded among the first, went out gaily. But well in the act of bearing in a wounded sergeant to our lines was shot in the knee by a rebel sharpshooter. Consequence, amputation, and death. He had resided with his father, John Glover, an aged and feeble man in Batavia, Genesee County, New York. But was at school in Wisconsin after the war broke out, and there enlisted. Soon took to soldier life, liked it, was very manly, was beloved by officers and comrades. He kept a little diary, like so many of the soldiers. On the day of his death he wrote the following in it. Today the doctor says I must die. All is over with me. Ah, so young to die. On another blank leaf he penciled to his brother. Dear brother Thomas, I have been brave but wicked. Pray for me. Hospital scenes, incidents. It is Sunday afternoon, middle of summer, hot and oppressive, and very silent through the ward. I am taking care of a critical case, now lying in a half lethargy. Near where I sit is a suffering rebel from the 8th Louisiana. His name is Irving. He has been here a long time, badly wounded, and lately had his leg amputated. It is not doing very well. Right opposite me is a sick soldier boy, lain down with his clothes on, sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his arm. I see by the yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. I step softly over and find by his card that he has named William Cohn of the first main cavalry and his folks live in Skohigen. Ice cream treat. One hot day toward the middle of June, I gave the inmates of Carver Hospital a general ice cream treat, purchasing a large quantity and under convoy of the doctor or head nurse going around personally through the wards to see to its distribution. An incident. In one of the rites before Atlanta, a rebel soldier of large size, evidently a young man, was mortally wounded top of the head so that his brains partially exuded. He lived three days, lying on his back on the spot where he first dropped. He dug with his heel in the ground during that time, a hole big enough to put in a couple of ordinary knapsacks. He just lay there in the open air and with little intermission kept his heel going night and day. Some of our soldiers then moved him to a house, but he died in a few minutes. Another. After the battles at Columbia, Tennessee, where we repulsed about a score of vehement rebel charges, they left a great many wounded on the ground, mostly within our range. Whenever any of these wounded attempted to move away by any means, generally by crawling off, our men without exception brought them down by a bullet. They let none crawl away, no matter what his condition. A Yankee soldier. As I turned off the avenue, one cool-up to work evening into 13th Street, a soldier with knapsack and overcoat stood at the corner inquiring his way. I found he wanted to go part of the road in my direction, so we walked on together. We soon fell into conversation. He was small and not very young and a tough little fellow, as I judged in the evening light, catching glimpses by the lamps we passed. His answers were short, but clear. His name was Charles Carroll. He belonged to one of the Massachusetts regiments and was born in or near Lynn. His parents were living, but were very old. There were four sons and all had a listed. Two had died of starvation and misery in the prisons at Andersonville and one had been killed in the West. He only was left. He was now going home and by the way he talked, I inferred that his time was nearly out. He made great calculations on being with his parents to comfort them the rest of their days. Union prisoners south. Michael Stansbury, 48 years of age, a seafaring man, a Southerner by birth and raising, formerly captain of U.S. light ship Long Shull, stationed at Long Shull Point, Pamlico Sound. Though a Southerner, a firm Union man, was captured February 17th, 1863 and has been nearly two years in the Confederate prisons. Was at one time ordered released by Governor Vance, but a rebel officer re-arrested him. Then sent on to Richmond for exchange, but instead of being exchanged was sent down as a Southern citizen, not a soldier, to Salisbury, North Carolina, where he remained until lately when he escaped among the exchanged by assuming the name of a dead soldier and coming up via Wilmington with the rest. Was about 16 months in Salisbury. Subsequent to October 64, there were about 11,000 Union prisoners in the stockade, about 100 of them Southern Unionists, 200 U.S. deserters. During the past winter, 1500 of the prisoners to save their lives joined the Confederacy on condition of being assigned merely to guard duty. Out of the 11,000, not more than 2,500 came out. 500 of these were pitiable, helpless wretches. The rest were in a condition to travel. There were often 60 dead bodies to be buried in the morning. The daily average would be about 40. The regular food was a meal of corn, the cob and husk ground together, and sometimes once a week a ration of sorghum molasses. A diminutive ration of meat might possibly come once a month, not oftener. In the stockade containing 11,000 men, there was a partial show of tents, not enough for 2,000. A large proportion of the men lived in holes in the ground, in the utmost wretchedness. Some froze to death, others had their hands and feet frozen. The rebel guards would occasionally, and on the least pretense, fire into the prison for mere demonism and wantonness. All the horrors that can be named starvation, lassitude, filth, vermin, despair, swift loss of self-respect, idiocy, insanity, and frequent murder were there. Stansbury has a wife and child living in Newburn, has written to them from here, is in the U.S. lighthouse employ still, had been home to Newburn to see his family, and on his return to the ship was captured in his boat. Has seen men brought there to Stansbury as hardy as you ever see in your life, in a few weeks completely dead gone, much of it from thinking on their condition, hope all gone. Has himself a hard, sad, strangely deadened kind of look, as of one chilled for years in the cold and dark, where his good manly nature had no room to exercise itself. Deserters, October 24th, saw a large squad of our own deserters, over 300, surrounded with a cordon of armed guards, marching along Pennsylvania Avenue. The most motley collection I ever saw, all sorts of rig, all sorts of hats and caps, many fine-looking young fellows, some of them shame-faced, some sickly, most of them dirty, shirts very dirty and long-worn, et cetera. They tramped along without order, a huge, huddling mass, not in ranks. I saw some of the spectators laughing, but I felt like anything else but laughing. These deserters are far more numerous than would be thought. Almost every day I see squads of them, sometimes two or three at a time, with a small guard, sometimes 10 or 12, under a larger one. I hear that desertions from the army now in the field have often averaged 10,000 a month. One of the commonest sites in Washington is a squad of deserters, a glimpse of war's hell scenes. In one of the late movements of our troops in the valley, near Upperville, I think, a strong force of Mosby's mounted guerrillas attacked a train of wounded and the guard of cavalry convoying them. The ambulances contained about 60 wounded, quite a number of them officers of rank. The rebels were in strength and the capture of the train and its partial guard after a short snap was effectually accomplished. No sooner had our men surrendered than the rebels instantly commenced robbing the train and murdering their prisoners, even the wounded. Here is the scene, or a sample of it, 10 minutes after. Among the wounded officers in the ambulances were one, a lieutenant of regulars, and another of higher rank. These two were dragged out on the ground on their backs and were now surrounded by the guerrillas, a demonic crowd, each member of which was stabbing them in different parts of their bodies. One of the officers had his feet pinned firmly to the ground by bayonets stuck through them and thrust into the ground. These two officers, as afterwards found on examination, had received about 20 such thrusts, some of them through the mouth, face, et cetera. The wounded had all been dragged to give a better chance also for plunder out of the wagons. Some had been effectually dispatched and their bodies were lying there lifeless and bloody. Others, not yet dead, but horribly mutilated, were moaning or groaning. Of our men who surrendered, most had been thus maimed or slaughtered. At this instant, a force of archivalry who had been following the train at some interval charged suddenly upon the sea-catched captors, who proceeded at once to make the best escape they could. Most of them got away, but we gobbled two officers and 17 men in the very acts just described. The sight was one which admitted of little discussion, as may be imagined. The 17 captured men and two officers were put under guard for the night, but it was decided there and then that they should die. The next morning the two officers were taken in the town, separate places, put in the center of the street and shot. The 17 men were taken to an open ground a little one side. They were placed in a hollow square, half encompassed by two of our cavalry regiments, one of which, regiments, had three days before, found the bloody corpses of three of their men, hamstrung, and hung up by the heels to limbs of trees by Mosby's guerrillas, and the other had not long before had 12 men, after surrendering, shot and then hung by the neck to limbs of trees, enduring inscriptions pinched to the breast of one of the corpses who had been a sergeant. Those three and those 12 had been found, I say, by these enviring regiments. Now with revolvers they formed the grim cordon of the 17 prisoners. The latter were placed in the midst of the hollow square, unfastened, and the ironical remark made to them that they were now to be given a chance for themselves. A few ran for it, but what use, from every side the deadly pills came. In a few minutes the 17 corpses strewed the hollow square. I was curious to know whether some of the Union soldiers, some few, some one or two at least of the youngsters, did not abstain from shooting on the helpless men. Not one. There was no exultation, very little said, almost nothing, yet every man there contributed his shot. Multiply the above by scores, eye hundreds, verified in all the forms that different circumstances individuals places could afford, light it with every lurid passion, the wolves, the lions lapping thirst for blood, the passionate boiling volcanoes of human revenge for comrades, brothers slain, with the light of burning farms and heaps of smutting, smoldering black embers, and in the human heart everywhere black, worse embers. And you have an inkling of this war. Gifts, money, discrimination. As a very large proportion of the wounded came up from the front without a sense of money in their pockets, I soon discovered that it was about the best thing I could do to raise their spirits and show them that somebody cared for them, and practically felt a fatherly or brotherly interest in them to give them small sums in such cases using tact and discretion about it. I am regularly supplied with funds for this purpose by good women and men in Boston, Salem, Providence, Brooklyn, and New York. I provide myself with a quantity of bright new 10 cent and 5 cent bills, and when I think it incumbent, I give 25 or 30 cents, perhaps 50 cents, and occasionally a still larger sum to some particular case. As I have started this project, I take opportunity to ventilate the financial question. My supplies altogether voluntary, mostly confidential, often seeming quite providential, were numerous and varied. For instance, there were two distant and wealthy ladies, sisters, who sent regularly for two years quite heavy sums and joining that their names should be kept secret. The same delicacy was indeed a frequent condition. From several I had carte blanche. Many were entire strangers. From these sources, during from two to three years in the manner described in the hospitals, I bestowed, as all manner for others, many, many thousands of dollars. I learned one thing conclusively, that beneath all the ostensible greed and heartlessness of our times, there is no end to the generous benevolence of men and women in the United States when once sure of their object. Another thing became clear to me. While cash is not a miss to bring up the rear, tact and magnetic sympathy and unction are and ever will be sovereign still. Items from my notebooks. Some of the half erased and not over legible when made, memoranda of things wanted by one patient or another will convey quite a fair idea. DSG, bed 52, wants a good book, has a sore weak throat, would like some whorehound candy, is from New Jersey, 28th Regiment. CHL, 145th Pennsylvania, lies in bed six with jaundice and erycephalus, also wounded, stomach easily nauseated, bring him some oranges, also a little tart jelly, hearty full-blooded young fellow, he got better in a few days and is now home on a furlough. JHG, bed 24, wants an undershirt, drawers and socks, has not had a change for quite a while, is evidently a neat clean boy from New England. I supplied him, also with a comb, toothbrush and some soap and towels, I noticed afterwards he was the cleanest of the whole ward. Mrs. G, lady nurse, ward F, wants a bottle of brandy, has two patients imperatively requiring stimulus, low with wounds and exhaustion. I supplied her with a bottle of first-rate brandy from the Christian Commission rooms. A case from 2nd Bull Run. Well, poor John Mahay is dead, he died yesterday, his was a painful and long-lingering case. C, page 24. I have been with him at times for the past 15 months. He belonged to Company A, 101st New York, and was shot through the lower region of the abdomen at 2nd Bull Run, August 62. One scene at his bedside will suffice for the agonies of nearly two years. The bladder had been perforated by a bullet going entirely through him. Not long since I sat a good part of the morning by his bedside, ward E, Armory Square. The water ran out of his eyes from the intense pain, and the muscles of his face were distorted, but he uttered nothing except a low groan now and then. Hot and moist cloths were applied and relieved him somewhat. Poor Mahay, a mere boy in age, but old and misfortune. He never knew the love of parents, was placed in infancy in one of the New York charitable institutions, and subsequently bound out to a tyrannical master in Sullivan County, the scars of whose cow hide and club remained yet on his back. His wound here was a most disagreeable one, for he was a gentle, cleanly and affectionate boy. He found friends in his hospital life and, indeed, was a universal favorite. He had quite a funeral ceremony. Army surgeons, aid deficiencies. I must bear my most emphatic testimony to the zeal, manliness, and professional spirit and capacity generally prevailing among the surgeons, many of them young men, in the hospitals and the army. I will not say much about the exceptions, for they are few, but I have met some of those few, and very incompetent and Irish they were. I never ceased to find the best men and the hardest and most disinterested workers among the surgeons in the hospitals. They are full of genius, too. I have seen many hundreds of them, and this is my testimony. There are, however, serious deficiencies, wastes, sad want of system, in the commissions, contributions, and in all the voluntary, and a great part of the governmental, nursing, edibles, medicines, stores, et cetera. I do not say surgical attendance because the surgeons cannot do more than human endurance permits. Whatever puffing accounts there may be in the papers of the North, this is the actual fact. No thorough previous preparation, no system, no foresight, no genius. Always plenty of stores, no doubt, but never where they are needed and never the proper application. Of all harrowing experiences, none is greater than that of the days following a heavy battle. Scores, hundreds of the noblest men on earth, uncomplaining, lie helpless, mangled, faint, alone, and so bleed to death, or die from exhaustion, either actually untouched at all, or merely the laying of them down and leaving them when there ought to be means provided to save them. The blue everywhere, this city, its suburbs, the capital, the front of the White House, the places of amusement, the avenue, and all the main streets swarm with soldiers this winter, more than ever before. Some are out from the hospitals, some from the neighboring camps, et cetera. One source or another, they pour plentiously and make, I should say, the marked feature in the human movement and costume appearance of our national city. Their blue pants and overcoats are everywhere. The clump of crutches is heard up the stairs of the paymaster's offices, and there are characteristic groups around the doors of the same, often waiting long and weirdly in the cold. Toward the latter part of the afternoon, you see the furloughed men, sometimes singly, sometimes in small squads, making their way to the Baltimore depot. At all times, except early in the morning, the patrol detachments are moving around, especially during the earlier hours of evening, examining passes and arresting all soldiers without them. They do not question the one-legged or men badly disabled and maimed, but all others are stopped. They also go around evenings through the auditoriums of the theaters and make officers and all show their passes or other authority for being there. A model hospital, Sunday, January 29th, 1865. Have been in Armory Square this afternoon. The wards are very comfortable, new floors and plaster walls and models of neatness. I am not sure but this is a model hospital after all in important respects. I found several sad cases of old lingering wounds. One Delaware soldier, William H. Millis from Bridgeville, whom I had been with after the battles of the wilderness last May, where he received a very bad wound in the chest, with another in the left arm and whose case was serious, pneumonia had set in, all last June and July. I now find well enough to do light duty. For three weeks at the time mentioned, he just hovered between life and death. End of chapter five. Section six, Specimen Days. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading by Lucy Burgoyne. Specimen Days by Walt Whitman. Section six, Boys in the Army. As I walked home about sunset, I saw in 14th Street a very young soldier, dimly clad, standing near the house I was about to enter. I stopped the moment in front of the door and called him to me. I knew that an old Tennessee regiment and also an Indiana regiment were temporarily stopping in New Barracks, near 14th Street. This boy I found belonged to the Tennessee regiment, but I could hardly believe he carried a musket. He was about 15 years old, yet had been 12 months soldier and had borne his part in several battles, even historic ones. I asked him if he did not suffer from the cold and if he had no overcoat. No, he did not suffer from cold and had no overcoat that could draw one whenever he wished. His father was dead and his mother living in some part of East Tennessee. All the men were from that part of the country. The next morning I saw the Tennessee and Indiana regiments marching down the avenue. My boy was with the former, stepping along with the rest. There were many other boys, no older. I still didn't watch them as they tramped along with slow, strong, heavy, regular steps. There did not appear to be a man over 30 years of age and a large proportion were from 15 to perhaps 22 or 23. They had all the look of veterans, worn, stained, impassive and a certain unbent lounging gate carrying in addition to their regular arms and knapsacks, frequently a frying pan, broom, et cetera. They were all a pleasant physiognomy, no refinement nor blanched with intellect. But as my eye picked them moving along, rank by rank, there did not seem to be a single, repulsive, brutal or markedly stupid face among them. Burial of a lady nurse. Here is an incident just occurred in one of the hospitals. A lady named Miss or Mrs. Billings, who has long been a practical friend of soldiers and nurse in the army and had become attached to it in a way that no one can realize that him or her who has had experience was taken sick early this winter, lingered some time and finally died in the hospital. It was her request that she should be buried among the soldiers and after the military method. This request was fully carried out. Her coffin was carried to the grave by soldiers with the usual escort, buried and a salute fired over the grave. This was at Anapolis a few days since. Female nurses for soldiers. There are many women in one position or another among the hospitals, mostly as nurses here in Washington and among the military stations, quite a number of them young ladies acting as volunteers. They are a help in certain ways and deserve to be mentioned with respect. Then it remains to be distinctly said that few or no young ladies under the irresistible conventions of society answered the practical requirements of nurses for soldiers. Middle-aged or healthy and good-conditioned elderly women, mothers of children are always best. Many of the wounded must be handled. A hundred things which cannot be gained said must occur and must be done. The presence of a good middle-aged or elderly woman, the magnetic touch of hands, the expressive features of the mother, the silent soothing of her presence, her words, her knowledge and privileges arrived and only through having had children are precious and final qualifications. It is a natural faculty that is required. It is not merely having a gentle young woman at a table in a ward. One of the finest nurses I met was red-faced, illiterate, old Irish woman. I have seen her take the poor, wasted naked boys so tenderly up in her arms. There are plenty of excellent, clean, old black women that would make tip-top nurses. Southern escapees. February 23, 65. I saw a large procession of young men from the rebel army. Deserters, they are called, but the usual meaning of the word does not apply to them. Passing the avenue today, there were nearly 200 come up yesterday by boat from James River. I stood and watched them as they shuffled along in a slow, tired, worn sort of way, a large proportion of light-haired, blonde, light grey-eyed young men among them. Their costumes had a dirt-stained uniformity. Most had been originally grey. Some had articles of their uniform, pants on, vest or coat on another. I think they were mostly Georgia and North Carolina boys. They excited little or no attention, as I stood quite close to them, several good-looking enough youths that, oh, what a tale of misery their appearance told. They nodded or just spoke to me, without doubt divining pity and fatherliness out of my face, for my heart was full enough of it. Several of the couples trudged along with their arms about each other. Some probably brothers, as if they were afraid they might somehow get separated. They nearly all looked what one might call simple, yet intelligent too. Some had pieces of old carpet, some blankets and other old bags around their shoulders. Some of them here and there had fine faces. Still it was a possession of misery. The two hundred had with them about half a dozen armed guards. Along this week I saw some such possession, more or less in numbers every day, as they were brought up by the boat. The government does what it can for them and sends them north and west. February 27th, some three or four hundred more excopees from the Confederate army came up on the boat. As the day has been very pleasant indeed, after a long spell, a bad weather, I have been wandering around a good deal without any other object than to be outdoors and enjoy it, have met these escaped men in all directions. Their apparel is the same ragged, long-worn motley as before described. I talked with a number of the men, some are quite bright and stylish, through all their poor clothes, walking with an air, wearing their old head coverings on one side, quite sorcery. I find the old unquestionable crooks as all along the past four years of the unscrupulous tyranny exercised by the succession government in conscripting the common people by absolute force everywhere and paying no attention whatever to the men's time being up, keeping them in military service just the same. One gigantic young fellow, a Georgian, at least six feet three inches high, broad-sized in proportion, and tied in the dirtiest drab, well-smeared rags, tied with strings, his trousers at the knees, all strips and streamers, was complacently standing, eating some bread and meat. He appeared contented enough. Then a few minutes after I saw him slowly walking along, it was plain he did not take anything to heart. February 28. As I passed the military headquarters of the city, not far from the President's house, I stopped to interview some of the crowd of escapees who were lounging there. In appearance, they were the same as previously mentioned. Two of them, one about 17, and the other, perhaps 25 or six, I talked with some time. They were from North Carolina, born and raised there, and had folks there. The elder had been in the rebel service for years. He was first conscripted for two years. He was then kept arbitrary in the ranks. This is the case with a large proportion at the Succession Army. There was nothing downcast in these young men's manners. The younger had been soldering about a year. He was conscripted. There were six brothers, all the boys of the family. In the army, part of them as conscripts, part as volunteers. Three had been killed, one had escaped about four months ago, and now this one had got away. He was a pleasant and well-talking lad with the peculiar North Carolina idiom. Not at all disagreeable to my ears. He and the older one were of the same company, and escaped together and wished to remain together. They thought of getting transportation away to Missouri and working there, but were not sure it was judicious. I advised them rather to go to some at the directly northern states and get farm work for the present. The younger had made six dollars on the boat with some tobacco he brought. He had three and a half left. The elder had nothing. I gave him a trifle. Soon after, met John Wormley, ninth Alabama, a West Tennessee raised boy. Parents both did, and the look of one for a long time on short allowance said very little, chewed tobacco at a fearful rate, spitting in proportion, large clear dark brown eyes, very fine, didn't know what to make of me, told me at last he wanted much to get some clean underclothes and a pair of decent pants, didn't care about coat or hack fixings, wanted a chance to wash himself well and put on the underclothes. I had the very great pleasure of helping him to accomplish all those wholesome designs. March 1st. Plenty more butternut or clay-colored ex-KPs every day. About 160 came in today, a large portion South Carolinians. They generally take the oath of allegiance and are sent north, west or extreme south-west if they wish. Several of them told me that the desertions in their army of men going home, leave or no leave, are far more numerous than their desertions to our side. I saw a very fallen-looking squad of about a hundred, late this afternoon, on their way to the Baltimore depot. The Capitals by Gaslight. Tonight I have been wandering a while in the capital, which is all lit up. The illuminated pretender looks fine. I like to stand aside and look along, long while, up at the dome. It comforts me somehow. The house and senate were both in session till very late. I looked in upon them, but only a few moments they were hard at work on tax and appropriation bills. I wandered through the long and rich corridors and departments under the senate. An old habit of mine, former winters, and now more satisfaction than ever. Not many persons down there occasionally a flitting figure in the distance. The inauguration. March 4th. The president very quietly rode down to the capital in his own carriage by himself on a sharp trot about noon, either because he wished to be on hand to sign bills, or to get rid of marching in line with the absurd procession, the Muslim temple of liberty and pass the board monitor. I saw him on his return at three o'clock after the performance was over. He was in his plane to horse Baruch and looked very much worn and tired. The lines indeed of vast responsibilities intricate questions and demands of blood and death cut deeper than ever upon his dark brown face, yet all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness and canny shrewdness underneath the parrots. I never see the man without feeling that he is one to become personally attached to, that his combination of purest heartiest tenderness and native Western form of manliness. By his side sat his little boy of 10 years. There were no soldiers, only a lot of civilians on horseback with huge yellow scarves over their shoulders, riding around the carriage. At the inauguration four years ago, he rode down and back again surrounded by a dense mass of armed Calvary men, eight deep with drawn sabers and there were sharpshooters stationed at every corner on the route. I ought to make mention of the closing levy of Saturday night last. Never before was such a compact jam in front of the White House, all the grounds filled and a way out to the spacious sidewalks. I was there as I took a notion to go, was in the rush inside with the crowd, surged along the passageways, the blue and other rooms and through the great East Room. Crowds of country people, some very funny, find music from the Marine Band of Inner Side Place. I saw Mr. Lincoln dressed all in black with white kid gloves and a claw hammer coat, receiving as in duty down, shaking hands, looking very disconsolate and as if he would give anything to be somewhere else. Attitude of foreign governments during the war. Looking over my scraps, I find I wrote the following during 1864, the happening to our America abroad as well as at home. These years is indeed most strange. The Democratic Republic has paid her today the terrible and resplendent compliment of the United Wish of all the nations of the world, that her union should be broken, her future cut off and that she should be compelled to descend to the level of kingdoms and empires ordinarily great. There is certainly not one government in Europe that is now watching the war in this country with the ardent prayer that the United States may be effectually split, crippled and dismembered by it. There is not one that would help toward the dismemberment if it did. I say such is the ardent wish today of England and of France as governments and of all the nations of Europe as governments. I think indeed it is today the real heartfelt wish of all the nations of the world with the single exception of Mexico, the only one to whom we have ever really done wrong and now the only one who prays for us and for our tribe with genuine prayer. It is not indeed strange. America made up of all, cheerfully from the beginning opening our arms to all, the result and justifier of all, of Britain, Germany, France and Spain, all here, the acceptor, the friend, hope, last resource and general house of all, she who has harmed none, had been bound to us to so many, to millions, the mother of strangers and exiles, all nations should now, I say, be paid this dread compliment of general governmental fear and hatred. Are we indignant, alarmed? Do we feel jeopardised? No helped, braced, concentrated brother? We are all too prone to wander from ourselves to affect Europe and watch our crowns and smiles. We need this hot lesson of general hatred and henceforth must never forget it. Never again will we trust the moral sense nor abstract friendliness of a single government of the whole world. The weather doesn't sympathise with these times. Whether the rains, the heat and cold and what underlies them all are affected with what affects man in masses and follow his play a passionate action strange stronger than usual and on a larger scale than usual. Whether this or not is a certain that there is now and has been for 20 months or more on this American continent north, many a remarkable, many an unprecedented expression of the sub-tah world of air above us and around us. There, since this war and the wide and deep national agitation, strange analogies, different combinations, a different sunlight or absence of it, different products even out of the ground. After every great battle, a great storm, even civic events the same. On Saturday last, a full moon like whirling demons, dark with slanting rain, full of rage and then the afternoon so calm, so bathed with flooding splendour from heaven's most excellent sun with atmosphere, the sweetness so clear it showed the stars long, long before they were due. As the president came out on the capital Portico, a curious little white cloud, the only one in that part of the sky, appeared like a hovering bird right over him. Indeed, the heavens, the elements, all the meteorological influences have run right for weeks past. Such capruces, abruptness, alternation of frowns and beauty, I never knew. It is a common remark that, as last summer, was different in its spells of intense heat from any proceeding it. The winter just completed has been without parallel. It has remained so down to the hour I am writing. Much of the daytime of the past month was sulky with leaden heaviness, fog, interstices of bitter cold and summing same storms. But there had been samples of another description. Nor Earth, nor Sky, and the new spectacles of super-bare beauty than some of the nights lately here. The western star, Venus, in the earlier hours of evening, has never been so large, so clear. It seems as if it told something as if it held report indulgent with humanity with us Americans. Five or six nights since, it hung close by the moon, then a little past its first quarter. The star was wonderful, the moon like a young mother. The sky, dark blue, the transparent night, the planets, the moderate west wind, the elastic temperature, the miracle of that great star, and the young and swelling moon swimming in the west suffused the soul. Then I heard, slow and clear, the deliberate notes of a bugle come up out of the silence, sounding so good through the night's mystery. No hurry, but firm and faithful, floating along, rising, falling leisurely, with here and there a long-drawn note. The bugle, well played, sounding tattooed in one of the army hospitals near here, where the wounded, some of them personally so dear to me, are lying in their cots, and many a sick boy come down to the war from Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the rest. Inauguration Ball, March 6th. I had been up to look at the dance and supper rooms, the Inauguration Ball at the Peyton office, and I could not help thinking what a different scene they presented to my view a while since, filled with a crowded mass at the worst wounded at the war, brought in from Second Ball Run, Antietam, and Fredericks Byrne. Tonight, beautiful women, perfumed the violin's sweetness, the poker and the waltz, then the amputation, the blue face, the groan, the glassy eye at the dying, the clotted rag, the odour of wounds and blood, and many a mother's son amid strangers, passing away, untended there, for the crowd of the badly hurt was great, and much for nurse to do, and much for surgeon. Scene at the Capitol. I must mention a strange scene at the Capitol, the hall of representatives, the morning of Saturday last, March 4th. The day just dawned, but in half darkness, everything dim, leaden, and soaking. In that dim light, the members nervous from long drawn duty, exhausted, some asleep, and many half asleep. The gaslight, mixed with the dingy daybreak, produced an unearthly effect. The poor little sleepy stumbling pages, the smell of the hall, the members with heads leaning on their desks, the sounds of the voices speaking, with unusual intonations. The general moral atmosphere, also of the close of this important session, the strong hope that the war is approaching its close, the tantalising dread, lest the hope may be a false one, the grandeur of the hall itself, with its effective vast shadows up towards the panels and spaces over the galleries, all made a marked combination. In the midst of this, with the suddenness of a thunderbolt, first one of the most angry and crashing storms of rain and hail ever heard. It beat like a deluge on the heavy glass roof of the hall, and the wind literally held and roared. For a moment, and no wonder, the nervous and sleeping representatives were thrown into confusion. The slumberers awaked with fear. Some started for the doors, some looked up with blanched cheeks and lips to the roof, and the little pages began to cry. It was the scene. But it was over almost as soon as the drowsy men were actually awake. They recovered themselves. The storm raged on, beating, dashing, and with loud noises at times. But the house went ahead with its business theme. I think, as calmly and with as much deliberation as at any time in its career. Perhaps the shock did a good. One is not without impression, after all, amid these members of Congress, of both the houses. But if the flat routine of their duties should ever be broken in upon by some great emergency, involving real danger and calling for first class personal qualities, those qualities would be found generally forthcoming and for men not now credited with them. A Yankee Antique March 27, 1865 Sergeant Kelvin F. Harlow Company C. 29, Massachusetts Third Brigade First Division Ninth Courts A marked sample of heroism and death. Some may say bravado, but I say heroism. A grandest, oldest order. In the late attack by the rebel troops and temporary capture by them of Fort Steadman at night. The fort was surprised at dead at night. Suddenly awakened from their sleep and rushing from their tents. Harlow, with others, found himself in the hands of the seeker. They demanded his surrender. He answered, Never will I live. Of course it was useless. The others surrendered. The odds were too great. Again he was asked to yield, this time by a rebel captain. But those surrounded and quite calm, he again refused, called sternly to his comrades to fight on and himself attempted to do so. The rebel captain then shot him, but at the same instant he shot the captain. Both fell together mortally wounded. Harlow died almost instantly. The rebels were driven out in a very short time. The body was buried next day, but soon taken up and sent home. Plymouth County mass. Harlow was only 22 years of age, was a tall, slim dark head, blue-eyed young man, had come out originally with the 29th and that is the way he met his death after four years' campaign. He was in the seven days' fight before Richmond, in Second Bull Run, Antietam, First Fredericks Burr, Fixburr, Jackson, Wilderness, and the campaigns following, was as good a soldier as ever were the blue and every old officer in the regiment will bear that testimony. Though so young and in a common rank, he had a spirit as resolute and brave as any hero in the books, ancient or modern. It was too great to say the words, I surrender, and so he died. When I think of such things, knowing them well, all the vast and complicated events at the war on which history dwells and makes its volumes fall aside, and for the moment at any rate, I see nothing but young Kelvin Harlow's figure in the night, disdaining to surrender. Wounds and diseases. The war is over, but the hospitals are fuller than ever from former and current cases. A large majority of the wounds are in the arms and legs, but there is every kind of wound in every part of the body. I should say of the sick from my observation that the prevailing melodies are typoid fever and the camp fever is generally diarrhea, cataral affections and bronchitis, rheumatism and pneumonia. These forms of sickness leave all the respite. There are twice as many sick as there are wounded. The deaths range from seven to 10% of those under treatment. Footnote. In the U.S. Surgeon's General Office since, there is a formal record and treatment of 153, 142 cases of wounds by government surgeons. What must have been the number unofficial? Indirect to say, nothing of the Southern armies. Death of President Lincoln. April 1665. I find in my notes of the time, this passage on the death of Abraham Lincoln. He leaves for America's history and biography so far not only its most dramatic reminiscence. He leaves, in my opinion, the greatest, best, most characteristic, artistic, moral personality, not but that he had faults and showed them in the presidency, but honesty, goodness, shrewdness, conscience and a new virtue unknown to other lands and hardly yet really known here, but the foundation and tire of all as the future will grandly develop. Unionism, in its truest and ampless sense, formed the hard pan of his character. These he sealed with his life. The tragic splendor of his death, purging, illuminating all, throws round his form, his head and aureol that will remain and will grow brighter through time while history lives and love of country lasts. By many has this union been helped, but if one name, one man must be picked out, he most of all is the conservator of it to the future. He was assassinated, but the union is not assassinated. Kaira, one falls and another falls. The soldier drops, sinks like a wave, but the ranks of the ocean eternally press on. Death does its work, obliterates a hundred, a thousand, president, general, captain, private, but the nation is immortal. End of section six.