They who inquire closely into the matter will find that hundreds and thousands have joined the army as privates, who in doing so have abandoned all their best worldly prospects, and have consented to begin the game of life again, believing that their duty to their country has now required their services. The fact has been that in the different States a spirit of rivalry has been excited. Indiana has endeavored to show that she was as forward as Illinois;Pennsylvania has been unwilling to lag behind New York;Massachusetts, who has always struggled to be foremost in peace, has desired to boast that she was first in war also; the smaller States have resolved to make their names heard, and those which at first were backward in sending troops have been shamed into greater earnestness by the public voice. There has been a general feeling throughout the people that the thing should be done--that the rebellion must be put down, and that it must be put down by arms.
Young men have been ashamed to remain behind; and their elders, acting under that glow of patriotism which so often warms the hearts of free men, but which, perhaps, does not often remain there long in all its heat, have left their wives and have gone also. It may be true that the voice of the majority has been coercive on many--that men have enlisted partly because the public voice required it of them, and not entirely through the promptings of individual spirit.
Such public voice in America is very potent; but it is not, I think, true that the army has been gathered together by the hope of high wages.
Such was my opinion of the men when I saw them from State to State clustering into their new regiments. They did not look like soldiers; but I regarded them as men earnestly intent on a work which they believed to be right. Afterward when I saw them in their camps, amid all the pomps and circumstances of glorious war, positively converted into troops, armed with real rifles and doing actual military service, I believed the same of them--but cannot say that I then liked them so well. Good motives had brought them there. They were the same men, or men of the same class, that I had seen before. They were doing just that which I knew they would have to do. But still I found that the more I saw of them, the more Ilost of that respect for them which I had once felt. I think it was their dirt that chiefly operated upon me. Then, too, they had hitherto done nothing, and they seemed to be so terribly intent upon their rations! The great boast of this army was that they eat meat twice a day, and that their daily supply of bread was more than they could consume.
When I had been two or three weeks in Washington, I went over to the army of the Potomac and spent a few days with some of the officers.
I had on previous occasions ridden about the camps, and had seen a review at which General McClellan trotted up and down the lines with all his numerous staff at his heels. I have always believed reviews to be absurdly useless as regards the purpose for which they are avowedly got up--that, namely, of military inspection. And Ibelieved this especially of this review. I do not believe that any commander-in-chief ever learns much as to the excellence or deficiencies of his troops by watching their manoeuvres on a vast open space; but I felt sure that General McClellan had learned nothing on this occasion. If before his review he did not know whether his men were good as soldiers, he did not possess any such knowledge after the review. If the matter may be regarded as a review of the general--if the object was to show him off to the men, that they might know how well he rode, and how grand he looked with his staff of forty or fifty officers at his heels, then this review must be considered as satisfactory. General McClellan does ride very well. So much I learned, and no more.
It was necessary to have a pass for crossing the Potomac either from one side or from the other, and such a pass I procured from a friend in the War-office, good for the whole period of my sojourn in Washington. The wording of the pass was more than ordinarily long, as it recommended me to the special courtesy of all whom I might encounter; but in this respect it was injurious to me rather than otherwise, as every picket by whom I was stopped found it necessary to read it to the end. The paper was almost invariably returned to me without a word; but the musket which was not unfrequently kept extended across my horse's nose by the reader's comrade would be withdrawn, and then I would ride on to the next barrier. It seemed to me that these passes were so numerous and were signed by so many officers that there could have been no risk in forging them. The army of the Potomac, into which they admitted the bearer, lay in quarters which were extended over a length of twenty miles up and down on the Virginian side of the river, and the river could be traversed at five different places. Crowds of men and women were going over daily, and no doubt all the visitors who so went with innocent purposes were provided with proper passports; but any whose purposes were not innocent, and who were not so provided, could have passed the pickets with counterfeited orders. This, I have little doubt, was done daily. Washington was full of secessionists, and every movement of the Federal army was communicated to the Confederates at Richmond, at which city was now established the Congress and headquarters of the Confederacy. But no such tidings of the Confederate army reached those in command at Washington.
There were many circumstances in the contest which led to this result, and I do not think that General McClellan had any power to prevent it. His system of passes certainly did not do so.
