Point Lookout. The President and Secretary of War to-day
(Jan. 2, 1864), commissioned me to go down to Point Lookout, and deliver to
Gen. Marston the book of oaths and the accompanying blanks, and explain to him
the mode in which they are to be used. Gen. Butler was ordered by telegraph to
meet me there and consult as to the manner of carrying out the President's plan
for pardoning and enlisting the repentant rebels. I bore a letter for Gen.
Butler’s instruction.
I went on board a little tug at the Seventh Street Wharf, and
rattled and rustled through the ice to Alexandria where I got on board the
Clyde, most palatial of steam tugs, fitted up with a very pretty cabin and
berths heated by steam and altogether sybaritic in its appointments.
The day was bitterly cold, and the wind was malignant on the
Potomac. I shut myself up in my gorgeous little cabin and scribbled and read
and slept all day. The captain thought best to lay to for a while in the night,
so we put in at Smith's Creek, and arrived at Point Lookout in the early morning.
I went to the head-quarters of the General, accompanied by a young officer who
asked my name and got it. I felt little interest in his patronymic, and it is
now gone into the oblivion of those ante Agamemnona. It was so cold that nobody
was stirring. A furry horse was crouching by the wall. “Hello, Billy! cold!
Ain't it?” said my companion. Billy was indignantly silent. We stumbled on over
the frozen ground past the long line of cottages that line the beach, built by
the crazy proprietor of the land who hoped to make here a great watering-place
which would draw the beauty and fashion of the country away from Long Branch,
and make Newport a Ranz des Vaches. We came up to a snug-looking frame house
which had been the dwelling of the adventurous lunatic. A tall young man, with
enormous blonde moustache and a general up-too-early air about him, hove in
sight, and my guide and friend introduced me. “Yes, I have heard of you, Mr.
Hale. I got a despatch from the General saying you would be here. When did you
arrive, Mr. Kay? Rather cold weather! Any ice on the river, Mr. Day?” All this
in a voice like a rumbling of distant thunder, measured and severe, and with a
manner of preternatural solemnity. “The General will soon be up, Mr. Hayes.” My
mild insinuation as to my cognomen having brought him that near to my
christening at last.
He disappeared, and coming back beckoned me out. I followed
him across a little entry into a room opposite. There stood in the attitude in
which, if Comfort ever were deified, the statues should be posed, — parted
coat-tails, — a broad plenilunar base exposed to the grateful warmth of the
pine-wood fire, — a hearty Yankee gentleman, clean-shaven, — sunny and rosy, — to
whom I was presented, and who said laconically, “Sit there!” pointing to a warm
seat by a well-spread breakfast table. I had an appetite engendered by a day
and night of river air, and I ate breakfast till the intelligent contraband,
who served us, caught the infection and plied me with pork-steaks till hunger
cried quarter. The General told a good yarn on a contraband soldier who
complained of a white man abusing him: — “I doesn't objeck to de pussonal
cuffin, but he must speck de unicorn.”
The General's flock are a queer lot. Dirty, ragged, yet
jolly. Most of them are still rebellious, but many are tired and ready to quit,
while some are actuated by a fierce desire to get out of the prison, and by
going into our army, avenge the wrongs of their forced service in the rebel
ranks.
They are great traders. A stray onion, — a lucky
treasure-trove of a piece of coal, — is a capital for extensive operations in
Confederate trash. They sell and gamble away their names with utter
recklessness. They have the easy carelessness of a about their patronymics.
They sell their names when drawn for a detail to work, a great prize in the
monotonous life of every day. A small-pox patient sells his place on the
sick-list to a friend who thinks the path to Dixie easier from the hospital
than the camp. The traffic in names on the morning of Gen. Butler’s detail of
500 for exchange was as lively as Wall Street on days when Taurus climbs the
Zenith, or the “Coal Hole” when gold is tumbling ten per cent. an hour.
They live in a 30-acre lot fenced around by themselves. They
put up the fence with great glee, saying, “they would fence out the d----d Yankees
and keep respectable.”
Rather a pleasant place, on a pleasant day, is Point
Lookout. To-day it was dreary and cold. I could not but think of the winter
life of the sanguine lunatic who built the little village intended for the
summer home of beauty and chivalry, and destined for the malodorous abode and
the unfragrant belongings of a great hospital in busy war-times.
My little boat got frightened at the blow that freshened in
the evening, and I sent her up to snooze the night away in Smith's Creek.
In the dusk of the evening Gen. Butler came clattering into
the room where Marston and I were sitting, followed by a couple of aides. We
had some hasty talk about business: — he told me how he was administering the
oath at Norfolk; how popular it was growing; children cried for it; how he
hated the Jews; how heavily he laid his hand on them; — “A nation that the Lord
had been trying to make something of for three thousand years, and had so far utterly
failed.” “King John knew how to deal with them — fried them in swine's fat.”
After drinking cider we went down to the Hudson City, the
General's flagship. His wife, niece and excessively pretty daughter; tall,
statuesque and fair, and named, by a happy prophecy of the blonde beauty of her
maturity, Blanche, were there at tea. I sent my little web-footed sulky word to
get home as she could, and sailed with the Butler’s for Baltimore.
At night, after the ladies had gone off to bed — they all
said retired, but I suppose it meant the same thing in the end, — we
began to talk about some queer matters. Butler had some odd stories about
physical sympathies; he talked also about the Hebrew jurisprudence and showed a
singular acquaintance with biblical studies; his occasional references to
anatomy and physiology evidently surprised the surgeon, to whom he respectfully
deferred from time to time. He talked till it grew late and we dispersed to
bed. I slept on the guards: a pleasant bed-room, but chilly; and listened till
I slept, to the cold and shuddering roar of the water under the wheels.
At Baltimore we took a special car and came home. I sat with
the General all the way and talked with him about many matters; Richmond and
its long immunity. He says he can take an army within thirty miles of Richmond
without any trouble; from that point the enemy can either be forced to fight in
the open field south of the city; or submit to be starved into surrender.
He was very severe on McClellan for his action about the New
Orleans expedition. He says that before the expedition was resolved on, by the President,
McClellan said it would require 50,000 men; after it was resolved on, he said
5,000 would be enough. He said he did not like to attack McC. Nil nisi
bonum, etc. But he might have to exploit that matter sometime.
I told him of the night of October 21.
He gave me some very dramatic incidents of his recent action
in Fortress Monroe, smoking out adventurers and confidence men, testing his
detectives, and matters of that sort. He makes more business in that sleepy,
little Department than anyone would have dreamed was in it.
SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts
from Diary, Volume 1, p. 146-52; for the entire diary entry see Tyler
Dennett, Editor, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letter of
John Hay, p. 148-51.
