Eyewitness 1861: Civil war transforms Washington
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President Lincoln visits with Union Gen. George McClellan at his headquarters on Oct. 4, 1862.
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Previously sleepy Washington has "the press and bustle of New York," a correspondent for The Daily Pittsburgh Gazette wrote during his wartime visit to the federal capital.
"Throngs of wagons block up the street, bearing every kind of burden," the reporter wrote on Dec. 21, 1861. New traffic controls were needed, and a "system of policemen at crossings will become a necessity."
The writer of the "Letter from Washington" was identified only by initials: "ED. J.A." He apparently was a part-time journalist, as were many 19th century newspaper reporters.
He revealed that the main reason he was visiting Washington was in the hope of getting himself a job in the War Department, then headed by Pennsylvanian Simon Cameron. While waiting several hours for his interview, he caught sight of President Abraham Lincoln and Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, who had come to confer with Cameron. Lincoln looked "so jovial ... uttering one or two little jokes," he wrote.
"ED. J.A." left Cameron's office disappointed, believing his interview had not been a success: "So the Secretary graciously dismisses you with the promise to keep your documents in view, and you retire, wondering whether you might not as well take your turn at once at the Park Railing," he wrote.
The railing he referred to was right outside the War Department. He speculated that many other disappointed office-seekers had slammed their hands against it in frustration: "If the iron were more impressionable, it would show him the dents of ten thousand previous fists, all as irate as his own."
Tongue in cheek, he concluded that a man who had failed to get a government job was not feeling "so much grief at his own disappointment, as sorrow in the knowledge that the country cannot last when merit is so neglected."
Pennsylvania, however, had gotten its share of high-level appointments, and the Gazette correspondent described three of the most prominent of them.
He took in a review of 15,000 volunteer soldiers. "It was a grand sight, and still more pleasant to see the enthusiasm and confidence manifested in our young General and Commander in Chief."
Philadelphia-born Gen. George McClellan was not "the proprietor of a bald head and a shriveled leg," the correspondent wrote. Lincoln, nevertheless, had recognized that the 34-year-old officer, sometimes called the Young Napoleon, linked "brains and judgment to a youth that adds vigor of execution to soundness of conception."
Lincoln had named Thomas Scott, 37, the general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, an assistant secretary of war. His task was to oversee military rail transport.
"The National Government has also called from our smoky old burgh, a mere youth in years to take charge of all the national roads and telegraphs," the correspondent wrote. "And the completeness of all the details of work under his charge, has proven how much earnest study and application may secure to the student."
The unidentified man the reporter was describing was Scott's young assistant, Andrew Carnegie, age 25.
The Gazette's correspondent also reported on practical aspects of life in wartime Washington. With politicians, soldiers and business people crowding the city, lodgings were scarce.
The reporter agreed to share his small room and bed for a few nights with an unidentified captain on short leave from the 102nd Pennsylvania Regiment, whom he wrote "has the knack of occupying more mattress at one time than any individual I ever had the misfortune to camp with."
Correction/Clarification: (Published December 12, 2011) The headline on the Eyewitness column Sunday about the Civil War's impact on Washington, D.C., was incorrect. It should have read, "Civil War Transforms Washington."
First Published December 11, 2011 12:00 am
