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LETTER FROM WASHINGTON
Harper's Weekly, February 4, 1865, pages 76-78 (Correspondence)
The Old World can not boast of a more glorious capital than that owned by the freemen of the United States. The rotunda is a fit shrine for those old Revolutionary paintings by the Revolutionary hero, Trumbull. The dome, rising in beautiful symmetry, is the beacon of liberty to the country, lifted up so high that the freedom-born shaft of Bunker Hill might be placed within it, with many feet to spare above its summit. Within the same marble edifice sit almost enthroned the legislators of our country in the most elegant of chambers. One would conceive that there were architectural attractions enough here to bring all our patres conscripti to their seats at the hour of twelve. But too frequently do the Speaker and Vice-President call their respective bodies to order at this hour without a quorum. Yet why should not lassitude prevent men from attending to their duties who load the desks before them with boots which are defacing the nations’ furniture? But the expiring Thirty-eight Congress has its Sumner, Colfax, Clarke, Foot Collamer, Grimes, Stevens, and the Washburnes, to whom the nation is indebted for a faithful and earnest discharge of their duties.
A visit to the national capitol is incomplete without a look around the Congressional Library. For while the library of Yale College contains less then fifty thousand volumes, the capitol library contains over sixty thousand. Yet the arrangement is so compact and nice that a guess would probably come far short of the proper figure. The books are all arranged according to their subjects. This was done by Thomas Jefferson after the Baconian system. To the three grand divisions of mental activity, memory, reason, imagination, correspond respectively history, philosophy, and the fine arts. Each of these grand divisions is divided and subdivided. For instance, history is divided into the civil and natural departments, and so forth. Newspapers are classified under the department of civil history. Our curiosity prompted us to go behind the scenes, and examine how great a museum of American newspapers is on file in our nation’s library. Alas! out of the very few we do not recollect any set complete from their origin. But the London Times is here in ponderous tomes complete from its foundation. The suggestion was forcibly brought home to us that the United States are rich enough in the style and character of their newspaper press to have files of the principal papers throughout the land carefully kept in the capitol library. Did only the votaries of the press derive benefit therefrom, that profession is large enough to have its "reports" carefully treasured up her.
Upon the lucus a non lucendo principle the "Baltimore Dépôt " deserves a passing reflection. Were a hackman to oblige his passengers to alight in a mud-puddle he would do something similar to the Railway Company that lands its passengers in the so-called "Baltimore Dépôt." In respect to appearance it might do for a City Point where the soldier does not care for looks. But in respect to convenience any quarter-master would return it as unfit for service. But we are giving too many words to such an affair, yet the American visiting his own capital must feel that the spot where he first sets foot on the consecrated ground of his nation should not suffer in comparison with the elegant stations at the capitals of Franc and England. The laws of association suggest to the traveler the hotel together with the dépôt, yet for another reason they might be thought of at the same time. For hotel life in Washington is a bar-room life emphatically. There has been too great a delicacy among writers in criticizing the public-house habits at the capital. The following, taken from a daily paper, shows how respectable such life is made, and where the reform must begin: "Senator ____, of ____, had a bar-room fight in Washington Thursday, and was knocked down by his opponent." Neal Dows and John B. Goughs are not so much needed to effect a reform as a higher tone of popular feeling respecting such things at the capital. Barnum may laugh at the Washington Monument as the humbug of Washington; but there is a moral slough in this city more shameful than this stump of an unfinished Washington Monument, and darker and fouler than the natural one from which the elder Adams redeemed the pride of the country—Pennsylvania Avenue.
But let us change the atmosphere, and, crossing the Potomac at the Aqueduct Bridge, enjoy this beautiful winter’s prospect of the capital from Arlington Heights. We get a fine view from the piazza of the Custis Mansion, now left alone and an untenanted possession of the Government. AS we walked through that grand oak forest an army of crows were cawing their ill bodings to him whose late home crowns the eminence. The grounds about the Custis Mansion are occupied as a grave-yard for Union soldiers, while in the house itself is the head-quarters of the captain superintending.
We pass by Forts Albany, Corcoran, and others, crowning these heights with their high flags afloat, and, as a more interesting and instructive object, devote our time to "Freedman’s Village," a colony of eighteen hundred liberated slaves. It is under the control of Government, and a sentinel takes your "pass." You scarcely enter before you perceive in their countenances of joy that both old and young appreciate the opportunities they have here for getting an education and learning the arts of civilization. Here we see the deserted Lee Mansion and the happy Freedman’s Village side by side. "How are the mighty fallen!" The master and freedman have exchanged places. "What God hath wrought!" is the message which now comes over the Potomac from Arlington Heights.
Mr. H. E. Simmons, of Rhode Island, superintends the schools here. He is assisted by half a dozen male and female assistants, and a casual call at the school convinces one that the children of Ham can become bright scholars. But Freedman’s Village has another and quite as powerful teacher in that well-known lecturess—Sojourner Truth. We found this veteran laborer for the slave in one of the little cottages, her hands in the flour. We congratulated her upon the rescue of this fragment, like that of the Israelites from the land of Egyptian darkness. But Sojourner replied with energy that this was only a "large Government poor-house." She wanted "her folks to be learning habits of economy, to be earning something, to become real Yankees." We bought on of Sojourner’s pictures, and she desired our autograph in her memorandum-book, in which a few days before had been inscribed, "For Aunty Sojourner Truth, A. Lincoln." Some horse-cars labeled "Colored persons not admitted" collect fares from far less sensible ones than honest, earnest, and God-worshiping Sojourner Truth.

C.P.O.

Washington, January, 1865.

Harper's Weekly, February 4, 1865, pages 76-78 (Correspondence)

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