The Pittsburg and Philadelphia Railway is, I believe,
accounted one of the best in America, which did not prevent my spending eight
hours last night off the line; but, being asleep at the time, I was unaware of
the circumstance. Instead of arriving at Philadelphia at 6 A.M., we did not get
there till 3 P.M. Passed Harrisburg at 9 A.M. It was full of Yankee soldiers,
and has evidently not recovered from the excitement consequent upon the late
invasion, one effect of which has been to prevent the cutting of the crops by
the calling out of the militia.
At Philadelphia I saw a train containing one hundred and
fifty Confederate prisoners, who were being stared at by a large number of the beau
monde of Philadelphia. I mingled with the crowd which was chaffing them.
Most of the people were good-natured, but I heard one suggestion to the effect
that they should be taken to the river, “and every mother's son of them drowned
there.”
I arrived at New York at 10 P.M., and drove to the Fifth
Avenue Hotel.
SOURCE: Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, Three
Months in the Southern States: April-June, 1863, p. 306
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