The demoralisation incident to a great war, the waste of unheard-of sums of money, the giving of contracts involving millions by which fortunes were made in a night, the riot of speculation and debauchery by those who tried to get rich suddenly without labour, had created a new Capital of the Nation. The vulture army of the base, venal, unpatriotic, and corrupt, which had swept down, a black cloud, in war-time to take advantage of the misfortunes of the Nation, had settled in Washington and gave new tone to its life.
Prior to the Civil War the Capital was ruled, and the standards of its social and political life fixed, by an aristocracy founded on brains, culture, and blood. Power was with few exceptions intrusted to an honourable body of high-spirited public officials. Now a Negro electorate controlled the city government, and gangs of drunken negroes, its sovereign citizens, paraded the streets at night firing their muskets unchallenged and unmolested.
A new mob of onion-laden breath, mixed with perspiring African odour, became the symbol of American Democracy.
A new order of society sprouted in this corruption. The old high-bred ways, tastes, and enthusiasms were driven into the hiding-places of a few families and cherished as relics of the past.
Washington, choked with scrofulous wealth, bowed the knee to the Almighty Dollar. The new altar was covered with a black mould of human blood—but no questions were asked.
