To-day I paid a second visit to General Scott, who received
me very kindly, and made many inquiries respecting the events in the Crimea and
the Indian mutiny and rebellion. He professed to have no apprehension for the
safety of the capital; but in reality there are only some 700 or 800 regulars
to protect it and the Navy Yard, and two field-batteries, commanded by an
officer of very doubtful attachment to the Union. The head of the Navy Yard is
openly accused of treasonable sympathies.
Mr. Seward has definitively refused to hold any intercourse
whatever with the Southern Commissioners, and they will retire almost
immediately from the capital. As matters look very threatening, I must go South
and see with my own eyes how affairs stand there, before the two sections come
to open rupture. Mr. Seward, the other day, in talking of the South, described
them as being in every respect behind the age, with fashions, habits, level of
thought, and modes of life, belonging to the worst part of the last century.
But still he never has been there himself! The Southern men come up to the
Northern cities and springs, but the Northerner rarely travels southwards.
Indeed, I am informed, that if he were a well-known Abolitionist, it would not
be safe for him to appear in a Southern city. I quite agree with my thoughtful
and earnest friend, Olmsted, that the United States can never be considered as
a free country till a man can speak as freely in Charleston as he can in New
York or Boston.
I dined with Mr. Riggss, the banker, who had an agreeable
party to meet me. Mr. Corcoran, his former partner, who was present, erected at
his own cost, and presented to the city, a fine building, to be used as an
art-gallery and museum; but as yet the arts which are to be found in Washington
are political and feminine only. Mr. Corcoran has a private gallery of
pictures, and a collection, in which is the much-praised Greek Slave of Hiram
Powers. The gentry of Columbia are thoroughly Virginian in sentiment, and look
rather south than north of the Potomac for political results. The President, I
hear this evening, is alarmed lest Virginia should become hostile, and his
policy, if he has any, is temporizing and timid. It is perfectly wonderful to
hear people using the word “Government” at all, as applied to the President and
his cabinet — a body which has no power “according to the constitution” to save
the country governed or itself from destruction. In fact, from the
circumstances under which the constitution was framed, it was natural that the
principal point kept in view should be the exhibition of a strong front to
foreign powers, combined with the least possible amount of constriction on the
internal relations of the different States.
In the hotel the roar of office-seekers is unabated. Train
after train adds to their numbers. They cumber the passages. The hall is
crowded to such a degree that suffocation might describe the degree to which
the pressure reaches, were it not that tobacco-smoke invigorates and sustains
the constitution. As to the condition of the floor it is beyond description.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 66-7
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