At several commanding positions we saw
fortifications, with the muzzles of cannon protruding from the
ramparts, the slopes of which were made of the yellow earth of that
region, and still unsodded; whereas, till these troublous times, there
have been no forts but what were grass-grown with the lapse of at least
a lifetime of peace. Our stopping-places were thronged with soldiers,
some of whom came through the cars, asking for newspapers that
contained accounts of the battle between the Merrimack and Monitor,
which had been fought the day before. A railway-train met us, conveying
a regiment out of Washington to some unknown point; and reaching the
capital, we filed out of the station between lines of soldiers, with
shouldered muskets, putting us in mind of similar spectacles at the
gates of European cities. It was not without sorrow that we saw the
free circulation of the nation's life-blood (at the very heart,
moreover) clogged with such strictures as these, which have caused
chronic diseases in almost all countries save our own. Will the time
ever come again, in America, when we may live half a score of years
without once seeing the likeness of a soldier, except it be in the
festal march of a company on its summer tour? Not in this generation,
I fear, nor in the next, nor till the Millennium; and even that blessed
epoch, as the prophecies seem to intimate, will advance to the sound
of the trumpet.
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