THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
Young Governor Sprague of Rhode Island, in military attire, with a waving yellow plume on his black felt hat, was also on the ground. He would not remain behind when his people went to the front. This Rhode Island Regiment was noted as one that had a remarkable number of millionaires in its ranks.
Soon after sunrise we had a train for Washington under way, filled with soldiers and a few civilian passengers. I walked into the city while the soldiers were getting into line at the station. The streets, which a few weeks ago I had seen filled with a lively multitude, now looked deserted and gloomy. Of the few persons I met on the sidewalk, some stared at me with a scowl on their brows, as if asking me: “What do you want here?” I was afterwards told that when the first troops, that had meanwhile arrived, marched into town they were received from doors and windows by the inhabitants with jeers and curses and insulting epithets, the resident population of Washington largely sympathizing with the secessionists. As soon as possible I reported myself to Mr. Lincoln at the White House. He seemed surprised, but glad to see me. I told him why I had come, and he approved. In his quaint way he described to me the anxieties he had passed through since the rebel attack on Fort Sumter and before the first Northern troops reached Washington. He told me of an incident characteristic of the situation which I wish I could repeat in his own language. I can give only the substance. One afternoon after he had issued his call for troops, he sat alone in this room, and a feeling came over him as if he were utterly deserted and helpless. He thought any moderately strong body of secessionist troops, if there were any in the neighborhood, might come over the “long bridge” across the Potomac, and just take him and the members of the Cabinet—the whole lot of them. Then he suddenly heard a sound like the boom of a cannon. “There they are!”
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