I yesterday went with my sons and Dr. Horwitz to Silver Spring, passing over the ground of the late fight. The chimneys of the burnt houses, the still barricaded road, the trampled fields, and other evidences bear testimony to what had occurred. The Blairs were absent from Silver Spring, but we turned down the lane which leads to it and went to the walls of Montgomery Blair's house, situated pleasantly on a little wooded eminence. But all was silent. Waste and war. Judge B. tells me the house and furniture cost him just about $20,000. The Rebels have done him this injury, and yet some whom they have never personally harmed denounce him as not earnest in the cause, as favoring the Rebels and their views. We went through the grounds to the mansion of the elder Mr. Blair. The place was less injured than I had supposed, and there must have been extra pains taken for the preservation of the shrubbery and the growing crops. Fields of the best corn I have seen this year were untouched. What depredation or plunder had been committed in the house I could not tell, for it was closed. My son, who led our pickets, was the first to enter it after the Rebels left. He found some papers scattered over the floor, which he gathered up. There had been crowds of persons there filling the house, sleeping on the floors, prying into the family privacy, but not more rudely, perhaps, than our own soldiers would have done, had the place been in their power.
SOURCE: Gideon
Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and
Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 80-1
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