Men Whom One Met In Washington Were Not Unhappy About The State Of Things, As I Had Seen Men Unhappy In The North And In The West. They Were Mainly Indifferent, But With That Sort Of Indifference Which Arises From A Break Down Of Faith In Anything.

"There was the army!

Yes, the army! But what an army! Nobody obeyed anybody. Nobody did anything! Nobody thought of advancing! There were, perhaps, two hundred thousand men assembled round Washington; and now the effort of supplying them with food and clothing was as much as could be accomplished! But the contractors, in the mean time, were becoming rich. And then as to the government! Who trusted it? Who would put their faith in Seward and Cameron? Cameron was now gone, it was true; and in that way the whole of the cabinet would soon be broken up. As to Congress, what could Congress do? Ask questions which no one would care to answer, and finally get itself packed up and sent home." The President and the Constitution fared no better in men's mouths. The former did nothing - neither harm nor good; and as for the latter, it had broken down and shown itself to be inefficient. So men ate, and drank, and laughed, waiting till chaos should come, secure in the belief that the atoms into which their world would resolve itself would connect themselves again in some other form without trouble on their part.

And at Washington I found no strong feeling against England and English conduct toward America. "We men of the world," a Washington man might have said, "know very well that everybody must take care of himself first. We are very good friends with you - of course, and are very glad to see you at our table whenever you come across the water; but as for rejoicing at your joys, or expecting you to sympathize with our sorrows, we know the world too well for that. We are splitting into pieces, and of course that is gain to you. Take another cigar." This polite, fashionable, and certainly comfortable way of looking at the matter had never been attained at New York or Philadelphia, at Boston or Chicago. The Northern provincial world of the States had declared to itself that those who were not with it were against it; that its neighbors should be either friends or foes; that it would understand nothing of neutrality. This was often mortifying to me, but I think I liked it better on the whole than the laisser-aller indifference of Washington.

Everybody acknowledged that society in Washington had been almost destroyed by the loss of the Southern half of the usual sojourners in the city. The Senators and members of government, who heretofore had come front the Southern States, had no doubt spent more money in the capital than their Northern brethren. They and their families had been more addicted to social pleasures. They are the descendants of the old English Cavaliers, whereas the Northern men have come from the old English Roundheads.

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