WAR TIMES REMINISCENCES OF MEN AND EVENTS IN WASHINGTON 5-0712 1860-1865 BY ALBERT GALLATIN RIDDLE - FORMERLY MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FROM PREFATORY NOTE. THE war-its policies, incidents, and men-its struggles, sufferings, and losses-its horrors, adventures, and triumphs-has been written up, dwelt upon, discussed, and talked over, in public and private, till he is a brave or a reckless man who ventures now to challenge public attention to anything further he may have to offer on that topic. Lincoln and his advisers have been written of. The great commanders have been glorified in type; several have written their own memoirs, while every corps, division, and many brigades and regiments, have furnished historians, and many of very considerable merit. After all, these in a way were but the gigantic mechanics of the war. Back of all the armies, back of the great Secretaries, back of the President,-of all,—was the Congress, where really the war had first to be fought. The President and all his embattled hosts were but the executive-working out-executing the mandates of this seemingly silent, invisible, but all-creative and compelling power. Of this, save incidentally and cursorily, nobody has spoken or written, except Hon. E. G. Spaulding,' of the New York delegation in the House. The philosophy of a people's history, especially a free 1 His History of the Legal-Tender Paper Money Used during the Great Rebellion, Buffalo, 1869. people, is to be gathered from its legislation. Whoever would rightly estimate the war must know of the men of the 37th and 38th Congresses and their legislation-especially of the 37th, who, half blindly at the first, but certainly, grasped the conditions of the great struggle, and wielded measureless power with an unswerving, fearless, but instinctive sagacity, which left to the next Congress nothing to do but to follow, and push forward along its broad and luminous way. The iron skeleton of the war lies imbedded in the twelfth and thirteenth volumes of the United States Statutes at Large. The time has not yet come for more than a memoir of this great Congress, which should be attempted at least by some one of its members who may impart to his work something of the local color and spirit of that body. The writer is one of the few survivors of the House, where he was not so conspicuous as to make enemies, nor yet so obscure as to be unable to make himself heard, if not felt, upon some of the greatest problems that have ever received legislative solution among men. He has long meditated something like a memoir, which he finally submits, not without misgiving. He can hardly expect great favor from the public when he has failed to win more than his own toleration for his work. He has spoken freely, perhaps gives too much space to his own utterances, and stands too prominently in the foreground. Speaking as he does in the first person of the things he in some way helped to accomplish, and which were wrought under his eyes, his place in the memoir for one of his personality was, perhaps, inevitable. In saying so much he neither expects nor desires to avoid criticism. Something of the Author-Parentage-Carried to the Western Reserve, Ohio, 1817-Hard Fortune-Political Influence of Joshua R. Giddings-Admitted to the Bar, 1840-Called the First Free- Soil Convention in Ohio, 1848-Defended the Oberlin Slave Res- cuers-Formation of the Republican Party-The Fremont Cam- paign-Elected to the 37th Congress in the Cleveland District- 19th Ohio-Relations with Salmon P. Chase-First Visit to the PAGE WASHINGTON IN 1861 (February-March, 1861) The Capital-Washington in 1861-Capitol Hill-Everything in Ruins-Washington a Southern City-The New Party and Men |