Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman. James Harvey Kidd
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Arlington, the former home of the Lees, Long bridge, Pennsylvania avenue, the Smithsonian institute, the tree where Sickles killed Key. These and other points of interest were quickly seen or visited.
And the Washington of 1862 was a very different city to the Washington of recent years. Where now are broad avenues of concrete pavement, were then wide streets of mud, through which teams of army mules, hauling heavy wagons, tugged and floundered. A dirty canal, full of foul smells, traversed the city where now are paved streets and fine buildings. Where then were waste places, now are lovely parks, adorned with statues. Rows of stately trees fringe the avenues, and green lawns dot the landscape, where in 1862 was a vast military camp, full of hospitals and squalid in appearance. The man who saw Washington then and returns to it for the first time, would be as much astonished as was Aladdin at the creations of his wonderful lamp. Certain salient features remain, but there has been on the whole a magical change.
Camp was pitched on Meridian Hill, well out on Fourteenth street, near Columbia college, then used for a hospital, and preparations were made to spend the winter there. The Fifth Michigan, which had reached Washington before us, was located on "Capitol Hill," at the opposite end of the city. We had a fine campground, stretching from Fourteenth street through to Seventh, well adapted to drill and parade purposes.
A few days after their arrival in Washington, the officers of the Sixth, under the escort of Congressman Kellogg, went in a body to pay their respects to President Lincoln, several members of the cabinet and the general of the army. Full dress was the proper "caper," they were told, and accordingly they were arrayed in their finest. The uniforms were new and there is no doubt that they were a gorgeous looking party as they marched up Pennsylvania avenue wearing shining brasses, bright red sashes, buff gauntlets, and sabres glittering in their scabbards. Mr. Kellogg pronounced the "Open Sesame" which caused the doors of the White House to open and secured admission to the presence of the President.
After being ushered into the "Blue Parlor" we were kept waiting for some time. Expectancy was on tip-toe, for few if any of the officers had seen Mr. Lincoln. But no introduction was needed when the door opened and the President stood before us. That was to me a memorable moment, for it was the first and last time that I saw Abraham Lincoln. There was no mistaking the tall, gaunt figure, the thin, care-worn face, the slovenly gait, as he entered the room. In appearance he was almost as unique as his place in history is unexampled. But spare, haggard and bent as he looked, he was yet a strikingly handsome man, for there was on his brow the stamp of greatness. We saw him as in a halo, and looked beyond the plain lineaments and habiliments of the man to the ideal figure of the statesman and president, struggling for the freedom of his country and the unity of his race, whom we all saw in the "Railsplitter" from Illinois; and he seemed, in his absent-minded way, to be looking beyond those present to the infinite realm of responsibility and care in which he dwelt.
It is the misfortune of Lincoln that his portraits have not been idealized like those of Julius Cæsar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Washington. It remains for some great artist, inspired by the nobility of his subject, to make those homely features so transparent that his reverent and grateful countrymen may look through them and see a presentment of the great soul and beautiful character that irradiated and glorified them in his life, and which will grow brighter and more lovely as the fugitive ages glide away.
The officers were introduced, one by one, and Mr. Lincoln gave each hand a shake as he uttered a perfunctory, but kindly, "How do you do?" and then turned quickly toward the door, as though his mind was still on the work which he had left in order to grant the interview, which must have trenched sadly upon his time.
But he was not to escape so easily, for the Congressman, rising to the occasion, said:
"Mr. President, these are the officers of a regiment of cavalry who have just come from my state of Michigan. They are 'Wolverines' and are on the track of 'Jeb' Stuart, whom they propose to pursue and capture if there is any virtue in a name."
"Gentlemen," said the President, with a twinkle of the eye, and the first and only indication of humor that he gave, "I can assure you that it would give me much greater pleasure to see 'Jeb Stuart' in captivity than it has given me to see you," and with a bow and smile he vanished.
Although we remained in Washington for about two months, I did not see him again. He never saw "Jeb Stuart" in captivity, but it was in a fight with the Michigan cavalry brigade that the dashing raider was killed. So the remark of the Congressman was not such an idle boast, after all.
When the Seventh Michigan arrived it was put in camp on the Seventh street side. Colonel J.T. Copeland, of the Fifth Michigan, was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers and assigned to the command of the three regiments. The brigade was attached to the division of General Silas Casey, all under General S.P. Heintzelman, who was in charge of the Department of Washington, with headquarters in the city. Freeman Norvell succeeded Copeland as colonel of the Fifth. The department extended out into Virginia as far as Fairfax Court House, and there was a cordon of troops entirely around the city.
The prospect was that the brigade would see little, if any fighting, for a time, as it was not to be sent on to the army at Falmouth. The work of drilling and disciplining went on without relaxation throughout the winter months, and when arms were issued, it was found, to the delight of all concerned, that we were to have repeating rifles.
The muskets or rifles issued to the United States infantry, during the civil war, were inferior weapons, and a brigade of Michigan militia of the present period would make short work of a military force of equal numbers so armed. It is one of the strange things about that war that the ordnance department did not anticipate the Austrians, Germans and French, in the employment of the fire-arm loaded at the breech which was so effective in the Franco-Prussian conflict and, if I am not mistaken, in the war between Prussia and Austria in 1866, also. This made of the individual soldier a host in himself. The old muzzle-loader, with its ramrod and dilatory "motions," ought to have been obsolete long before Grant left the West to lead the Army of the Potomac from the Wilderness to Appomattox. The Michigan cavalry brigade, armed as it was with repeating carbines, was never whipped when it had a chance to use them. In arming the infantry the government was fifty years behind the times.
Possibly the same thing might be said truthfully of the artillery also, though the union artillerists, notwithstanding the handicap, did such effective work as would have delighted the "Little Corporal," himself.
The "Spencer" rifle was an invention brought to the notice of the Ordnance Department about that time. Among the numerous "charges" brought against James G. Blaine was one that he was interested in the manufacture of this arm and in the contract for furnishing it to the government. How much truth there may have been in the assertion I do not know, but if Mr. Blaine was instrumental in bringing about the adoption of the "Spencer" for the use of the Federal cavalry, he ought to have had a vote of thanks by Congress, for a better gun had never been issued, and if the entire army had been supplied with it the war could not have lasted ninety days and Mr. Seward would have been a prophet.
The "Spencer" was a magazine gun carrying eight cartridges, all of which could be discharged without taking the arm from the shoulder. It was loaded at the breech and the act of throwing out an empty shell replaced it with a fresh cartridge. Against such arms the old-fashioned muzzle-loaders, with which the infantry was equipped, were ineffective. The Michigan men were fortunate in being among the very first to receive these repeating rifles which, after the first year in the field, were exchanged for the carbine of the same make, a lighter arm and better adapted for the use of cavalry.
CHAPTER IX
THE STAY IN WASHINGTON
The stay in Washington though brief, was monotonous. Time hung heavily on our hands. And yet, it was not devoid of incident. There is, perhaps, little of this that is worth recounting, of those things, at least, that appeared on the surface. Had one been able to reach the penetralia—the inmost recesses—of official and military life, he might have brought away with him reminiscences that would make racy reading.