This morning our
Brigade Surgeon ordered me to leave the hospital for a few days, on account of
my fatigue and prostration. He said that a regard for my health demanded it,
and I must go where I pleased. I rode to Arlington, the headquarters of General
King. The Arlington house, I believe, is (unless confiscated) the property of
Gen. Lee. It is a magnificent mansion, overlooking Georgetown, Washington,
Alexandria, and miles of the beautiful Potomac. In a room of this house, said
to have been a favorite room of General Washington, I found my old friend
Surgeon ———,badly broken by the fatigue and excitement of the campaign. I
called on him, in company with Doctor A——, and after talking of his illness for
half an hour, Doctor A. proposed to him to have my advice, to which he replied
"Yes! if he will not medicate me too much." I said, "Doctor, I
will prescribe for you, and with a single dose will medicate every fibre of
your body, and by a healthy shock, restore you to health at once." With a
look as if he thought me a hyena, he asked: "What do you mean to do with
me?" "To take you out of this place and put you for thirty days under
the care of your wife and family." The poor suffering man grasped my hand,
burst into tears and sobbed aloud, "My Colonel won't consent to it."
For a moment, forgetting his religion, and not having the fear of military
commanders before my eyes, "Your Colonel may go to the d-vil, and you
shall have a furlough." I rode immediately to medical headquarters in
Washington, procured him the promise of a furlough as soon as his papers could
be sent in, returned, informed him of it, and had the pleasure on my long night
ride back to camp, of feeling that I had contributed something to the happines,
and, perhaps, had saved the life of a good and worthy man. How easy for any
man, however humble his position, to find opportunities of doing good, if he
will only wear the "spectacles of benevolence."
After the vandalism
I have witnessed in the destruction of property, in and about the houses of
rebels and elsewhere, it was a pleasurable relief to find here, that General
King, in the goodness of his always good heart, had enforced respect for the
property and furniture. The garden, with its fences, is preserved, and the
walls of almost every room in this immense old building, are covered with the
rich paintings and old family pictures, left hanging when this favorite of
rebeldom left his home. The garden is fine, but I think does not compare with
that of Kalorama. The antique bureaus and [s]ide-boards calling up impressions
of generations long passed away, are still tenants of the building; and the
halls recall Scott's fine description of the Halls of the Douglass, where the
arms of the hunters, and the trophies of the hunt, mingled with the trappings
of the warrior, constituted the attractive features of the chieftain's forest
home. Over the halls, and at every angle in the stairs, were the antlers of the
elk and the red-deer fastened to the walls and nearly interlocking their
branches over my head as I walked through. They were hung, too, with the arms
of the hunter and the warrior. So perfectly does this position command
Washington, that had the rebels there secretly collected a dozen mortars, they
might have fired the city before a gun could have been brought to bear on them.
Everybody is talking of a prospect of a move within three days, but the origin
of the reports I know not; perhaps in the impatience of the army to be led forward.
SOURCE: Alfred L.
Castleman, The Army of the Potomac. Behind the Scenes. A Diary of
Unwritten History; From the Organization of the Army, by General George B.
McClellan, to the close of the Campaign in Virginia about the First Day
January, 1863, pp. 53-5
