We were not in time to see Washington as a camp. On the very day of
our arrival sixty thousand men had crossed the Potomac on their march
towards Manassas; and almost with their first step into the Virginia
mud, the phantasmagory of a countless host and impregnable ramparts,
before which they had so long remained quiescent, dissolved quite
away. It was as if General McClellan had thrust his sword into a
gigantic enemy, and, beholding him suddenly collapse, had discovered
to himself and the world that he had merely punctured an enormously
swollen bladder. There are instances of a similar character in old
romances, where great armies are long kept at bay by the arts of
necromancers, who build airy towers and battlements, and muster
warriors of terrible aspect, and thus feign a defence of seeming
impregnability, until some bolder champion of the besiegers dashes
forward to try an encounter with the foremost foeman, and finds him
melt away in the death-grapple. With such heroic adventures let the
march upon Manassas be hereafter reckoned. The whole business, though
connected with the destinies of a nation, takes inevitably a tinge of
the ludicrous. The vast preparation of men and warlike material,--the
majestic patience and docility with which the people waited through
those weary and dreary months,--the martial skill, courage, and
caution, with which our movement was ultimately made,--and, at last,
the tremendous shock with which we were brought suddenly up against
nothing at all! The Southerners show little sense of humor nowadays,
but I think they must have meant to provoke a laugh at our expense,
when they planted those Quaker guns.
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