The Last Hours of Congress--Washington Crowds, and the President. From an Occasional Correspondent. WASHINGTON, Monday, March 6, 1865.
The just closed hours of the Nineteenth Presidentiad,
and the Thirty-Eighth Congress of the Nation, afford two or three items
merging into the inauguration of the Twentieth, which you with probably
not receive by telegraph, but may be worthwhile for me to catch as they
are flying, and jot them down. So I will skip what is latest up this
morning--SHERIDAN'S reported victory over EARLY,
the pending Departmental and other nominations, &c., (the forthcoming
Ball in the Patent Office also,) and write my passing observations of last
Saturday. Simply saying, first, however, that I have this moment been up
to look at the gorgeously arrayed ball and supper-rooms, for the Inauguration
Dance aforesaid, (which begins in a few hours;) and I could not help thinking
of the scene those rooms, where the music will sound and the dancers' feet
presently tread--what a different scene they presented to my view a while
once, filled with a crowded mass of the worst wounded of the war, brought
in from Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburgh. Tonight,
beautiful women, perfumes, the violin's sweetness, the polka and the waltz;
but then, the amputation, the blue face, the groan, the glassy eye of the
dying, the clotted rag, the odor of the old 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.)
Think not of such grim things, gloved ladies, as you bow to your partners,
and the figures of the dance this night are loudly called, or you may drop
on the floor that has known what this one knew, but two short winters since.
INCIDENT AT THE CAPITOL. To begin with the morning of Saturday last. The day just dawned, but in half-darkness, every thing dim, leaden, and soaking. In that dim light of dawn, under such circumstances, a strange occurrence happened in the Capitol, in the Hall of the House. The members were nervous, from long drawn duty, exhausted, some asleep, and many half asleep. The gas-light, mixed with dingy day-break, produced an unearthly effect. The poor little sleepy, stumbling pages, the smell of the Hall, the members with heads leaning on their desks asleep, the sounds of the voices speaking, with unusual intonations, the general moral atmosphere also of the close of this important session, the grandeur of the hall itself, with its effect of vast shadows up toward the panels and spaces over the galleries, all made a marked combination. In the midst of this, with the suddenness of a thunderbolt, burst one of the most angry and crashing storms of rain and wind ever heard. It beat like a deluge on the heavy glass roof of the hall, and the wind literally howled and roared. For a moment, (and no wonder) the nervous and sleeping Representatives were thrown into confusion. The slumberers waked 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 a scene. But it was over almost as soon as the drowsied 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 then, I think, as calmly and with as much deliberation as at any time in its career. Perhaps the shock did it good. (One is not without a impression, after all, amid these members of Congress, of both the Houses, that if the flat and selfish 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 end from men not now credited with them.) PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE. As the day advanced, of course Pennsylvania avenue absorbed all.. The show here was to me worth all the rest. The effect was heterogeneous, novel, and quite inspiriting. It will perhaps be got at, by making a list in the following manner, to wit: Mud, (and such mud!) amid and upon which streaming crowds of citizens; lots of blue-dressed soldiers; any quantity of male and female Africans, (especially female;) horrid perpetual entanglements at the crossings, sometimes a dead lock; more mud, the wide street black, and several inches deep with it; clattering groups of cavalrymen out there on a gallop, (and occasionally as single horseman might have been seen, &c;) processions of firemen, with their engines, evidently from the north; a regiment of blacks, in full uniform, with guns on their shoulders; the splendor overhead; the oceanic crowd, equal almost to Broadway; the wide Avenue, its vista very fine, down at one end closed by the capitol, with milky bulging dome, and the Maternal Figure over all, (with the sword by her side and the sun glittering on her helmeted head;) at the other, the western end, the pillared front of the Treasury Building, looking south; altogether quite a refreshing spot and hour, and plenty of architectural show with life and magnetism also. Among other times, our heavenly neighbor Hesperus, the star of the West, was quite plain just after midday; it was right over head. I occasionally stopped with the crowd and looked up at it. Every corner had its little squad, thus engaged; often soldiers, often black, with raised faces, well worth looking at themselves, as new styles of physiognomical pictures. THE PROCESSION AND THE PRESIDENT. In some respects the printed reports of Saturday's
ceremonies here will give you a widely erroneous notion of the way they
really transpired. For instance, the different parts of the procession
were characterized by a charming looseness and independence. Each
went up and down the Avenue in the way and at the time which seemed convenient,
and was a law unto itself. The President very quietly rode down to
the Capitol in his own carriage, by himself, on a sharp trot, about noon,
either because he wished to be on hand to sign bills, &c., or to get
rid of marching in line with the muslin Temple of Liberty, and the pasteboard
Monitor. I saw him on his return, at three o'clock, after the performance
was over. He was in his plain two-horse barouche, and looked very
much worn and tired; the lines, indeed, of vast responsibilities, intricate
questions, and demands of life and death, cut deeper than ever upon his
dark brown face; yet all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness, and canny
shrewdness, underneath the furrows. (I never see that man without feeling
that he is one to become personally attached to, for his combination of
purest, heartiest tenderness, and native Western even rudest forms of manliness.)
By his side sat his little boy, of ten years. There were no soldiers,
only a lot of civilians on horseback, with huge yellow scarfs 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 cavalrymen
eight deep, with drawn sabres, and carbines clanking at their sides, and
there were sharp-shooters stationed at every corner on the route.
DO THE HEAVENS SYMPATHIZE WITH US? Whether the rains, and the heat and cold, or what
underlies them all, affected with what affects man in masses, and follow
his play of passionate action, strained stronger than usual, and on a larger
scale than usual; --whether this, or no, it is certain that there is now,
and has been for twenty months or more on this American Continent North,
many a remarkable, many an unprecedented expression of the subtle 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, a forenoon like whirling demons, dark, with slanting
rain, full of rage; and then the afternoon, so calm, so bathed with flooding
splendor from heaven's most excellent sun, with atmosphere of sweetness;
so clear it showed the stars, long, long before they were due. As
the President came out on the capitol portico, a curious little white cloud,
the only one in that part of the sky, appeared like a hovering bird, right
over him.
WALT WHITMAN.
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