FEDERAL HILL, BALTIMORE.
From a sketch made on the flay of the occupation hy General Butler.
On the 27th of April, 1861, General B. F. Butler was assigned to the command of the Department of Annapolis, which did not include Baltimore. On the 5tli of May, with two regiments and a battery of artillery, he moved from Washington to the Belay House, on the Baltimore and Ohio Kailway, 7 miles from Baltimore, at the junction of the Washington branch He fortified this position, and on the 13th entered Baltimore and occupied and fortified Federal Hill, overlooking the harbor and commanding the city. On the loth he was followed in command of the Department by General George Cadwalader, who was succeeded on the 11th of June by General N. P. Banks, who administered the Department until succeeded by General John A. Dix, July 23,1861. On the 22d of May General Butler assumed command at Fort Monroe, Va.
and to-morrow I shall follow with my company.” Silence fell upon our little band. A cloud seemed to come between us and the sun. It was the beginning of the end too soon to come.
The story of one broken circle is the story of another at the outset of such a war. Before the week was over, the scattering of our household, which no one then believed to be more than temporary, had begun. Living as we did upon ground likely to be in the track of armies gathering to confront each other, it was deemed advisable to send the children and young girls into a place more remote from chances of danger. Some weeks later, the heads of the household, two widowed sisters, whose sons were at Manassas, drove away from their home in their carriage at early morning, having spent the previous night in company with a half-grown lad digging in the cellar hasty graves for the interment, of two boxes of old English silver-ware, heir-looms in the family, for which there was no time to provide otherwise. Although the enemy were long encamped immediately above it after the house was burnt the following year, this silver was found there when the war had ended; it was lying loose in the earth, the boxes having rotted away.
The point at which our family reunited within the Confederate lines was Bristoe, the station next beyond Manassas, a cheerless railway inn; a part of the premises was used as a country grocery store ; and there quarters were secured for us with a view to being near the army. By this time all our kith and kin of fighting age had joined the volunteers. One cannot picture accommodations more forlorn than these eagerly taken for us and for other families attracted to Bristoe by the same powerful magnet. The summer sun poured its burning rays upon whitewashed walls unshaded by a tree. Our bedrooms were almost uninhabitable by day or night, our fare the plainest. Prom the windows we beheld only a flat, uncultivated country, crossed by red-clay roads, then ankle-deep in dust. We learned to look for all excitement to the glittering lines of railway track, along which continually thundered trains bound to and from the front. It was impossible to allow such a train to pass without running out upon the platform to salute it, for in this way we greeted many
part in that holiday festivity, all were in the active service of the South,—one of them, alas! soon to fall under a rain of shot and shell beside his gun at Fredericksburg; the youngest of the number had left his mother’s knee to fight at Manassas, and found himself, before the year was out, a midshipman aboard the Confederate steamer Nashville, on her cruise in distant seas!
My first vivid impression of war-days was during a ramble in the neighboring woods one Sunday afternoon in spring, when the young people in a happy band set out in search of wild flowers. Pink honeysuckles, blue lupine, beds of fairy flax, anemones, and ferns in abundance sprang under the canopy of young leaves on the forest boughs, and the air was full of the song of birds and the music of running waters. We knew every mossy path far and near in those woods; every tree had been watched and cherished by those who went before us, and dearer than any other spot on earth was our tranquil, sweet Yaucluse. Suddenly the shrill whistle of a locomotive struck the ear, an unwonted sound on Sunday.
“Do you know what that means?” said one of the older cousins who accompanied the party. “It is the special train carrying Alexandria volunteers to Manassas,
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E. Lee, of Arlington, were slow to accept the startling suggestion of disruption of the Union. At any rate, we enjoyed the usual holiday gathering of kinsfolk in the usual fashion. The old Vaucluse house, known for many years past as a center of cheerful hospitality in the county, threw wide open its doors to receive all the members who could be gathered there of a large family circle. The woods about were despoiled of holly and spruce, pine and cedar, to deck the walls and wreathe the picture-frames. On Christmas Eve we had a grand rally of youths and boys belonging to the “elan,” as they loved to call it, to roll in a yule log, which was deposited upon a glowing bed of coals in the big “red-parlor” fire-place, and sit about it afterward, welcoming the Christmas in with goblets of egg-nog and apple-toddy.
“Where shall we be a year hence?” some one asked at a pause in the merry chat; and, in the brief silence that followed, arose a sudden spectral thought of war. All felt its presence; no one cared to speak first of its grim possibilities.
On Christmas Eve the following year the old house lay in ruins, a sacrifice by Union troops to military necessity; the forest giants that kept watch around her walls had been cut down and made to serve as breastworks for a fort erected on the Yaucluse property as part of the defenses of Washington. Of the young men and boys who took
VIRGINIA SCENES IN ’61.
BY CONSTANCE CARY HARRISON.
Author of “Sweet Bells Out of Tune,”
“The Anglomaniacs,” “ Flower lie Hundred,” etc., etc.
THE only association I have with my old home ;! in Virginia that is not one of unmixed happi- j ness relates to the time immediately succeed- I ing the execution of John Brown at Harper's Per- f ry. Our homestead was in Fairfax County, at some distance from the theater of that tragic episode; I and, belonging as we did to a family among the first 1 in the State to manumit slaves,—our grandfather	I
having set free those that came to him by inheri- J tanee, and the people who served us being hired from their owners and remaining in our employ 1 through years of kindliest relations,—there seemed	j;
to be no especial reason for us to share in the ap- p prehension of an uprising of the blacks. But there was the fear—unspoken, or pooh-poohed at by the men who were mouth-pieces for our community— dark, boding, oppressive, and altogether hateful.
I can remember taking it to bed with me at night, and awaking suddenly oftentimes to confront it through a vigil of nervous terror, of which it never	jj
occurred to me to speak to any one. The notes of	№
whip-poor-wills in the sweet-gum swamp near the 1 stable, the mutterings of a distant thunder-storm, 1 even the rustle of the night wind in the oaks that shaded my window, filled me with nameless dread.
In the daytime it, seemed impossible to associate suspicion with those familiar tawny or sable faces that surrounded us. We had seen them for so many years smiling or saddening with the family joys or sorrows; they were so guileless, so patient, so satisfied. What subtle influence was at work that should transform them into tigers thirsting for our blood? The idea was preposterous. But when evening came again, and with it the hour when the colored people (who in summer and autumn weather kept astir half the night) assembled themselves together for dance or prayer-meeting, the ghost that refused to be laid was again at one’s elbow. Busty bolts were drawn and rusty fire-arms loaded. A
watch was set where never before had eye or ear been lent to such a service.
In short, peace had flown from the borders of Virginia.
Although the newspapers were full of secession talk and the matter was eagerly discussed at our tables,
I cannot remember that, as late as Christmas-time of the year 1860, coming events had cast any definite shadow on o ur homes. The people in our neighborhood, of one opinion with their dear and honored while passing through Baltimore, friend, Col. Bobert
PORTRAITS OF CONFEDERATE PRIVATES.
From ami)rotypes found after the war in the dead-letter office, Richmond. Accompanying letters suggest that the warlike attitude was a favorite pose for pictures intended for sisters and sweethearts.
UNIFORM OF THE SIXTH MASSACHUSETTS.
The regiment that was mobhed