The Place Had Been Made A Hospital For
Northern Soldiers, And No Doubt The Site For That Purpose Had Been
Well Chosen.
But let any woman imagine what would be the feelings
of her life while living in a town used as a hospital for the
enemies against whom her absent husband was then fighting.
Her own
man would be away - ill, wounded, dying, for what she knew, without
the comfort of any hospital attendance, without physic, with no one
to comfort him; but those she hated with a hatred much keener than
his were close to her hand, using some friend's house that had been
forcibly taken, crawling out into the sun under her eyes, taking the
bread from her mouth! Life in Alexandria at this time must have
been sad enough. The people were all secessionists, but the town
was held by the Northern party. Through the lines, into Virginia,
they could not go at all. Up to Washington they could not go
without a military pass, not to be obtained without some cause
given. All trade was at an end. In no town at that time was trade
very flourishing; but here it was killed altogether - except that
absolutely necessary trade of bread. Who would buy boots or coats,
or want new saddles, or waste money on books, in such days as these,
in such a town as Alexandria? And then out of 1500 men, one-half
had gone to fight the Southern battles! Among the women of
Alexandria secession would have found but few opponents.
It was here that a hot-brained young man, named Ellsworth, was
killed in the early days of the rebellion. He was a colonel in the
Northern volunteer army, and on entering Alexandria found a
secession flag flying at the chief hotel. Instead of sending up a
corporal's guard to remove it, he rushed up and pulled it down with
his own hand. As he descended, the landlord shot him dead, and one
of his soldier's shot the landlord dead. It was a pity that so
brave a lad, who had risen so high, should fall so vainly; but they
have made a hero of him in America; have inscribed his name on
marble monuments, and counted him up among their great men. In all
this their mistake is very great. It is bad for a country to have
no names worthy of monumental brass; but it is worse for a country
to have monumental brasses covered with names which have never been
made worthy of such honor. Ellsworth had shown himself to be brave
and foolish. Let his folly be pardoned on the score of his courage,
and there, I think, should have been an end of it.
I found afterward that Mount Vernon was accessible, and I rode
thither with some officers of the staff of General Heintzelman,
whose outside pickets were stationed beyond the old place. I
certainly should not have been well pleased had I been forced to
leave the country without seeing the house in which Washington had
lived and died.
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