black as the King of Dahomey. The other was whiter than most of the officers in the room. They were the hotel table-waiters and also a quadrille band. The violinist did not know B flat from F sharp. Musical notation was Greek to him; but he had rhythm, a quick, tuneful ear, and an appreciation of the beautiful in music rarely found among the many thousands who take lessons by the quarter. He did not give us Old Tar River, Uncle Ned, and O Susannah, but themes from Labitsky and Donizetti, — melodies which once heard are long remembered. His two comrades accompanied him in time and tune. For the young ladies and officers it was a delightful hour. Mr. Brown was the factotum, calling the changes with as much steadiness and precision, while handling the double-bass, as Hall or Dodworth at the grand ball to the Prince of Wales. So we were served by four thousand dollars' worth of body and soul ! The door-way leading into the hall was a portrait-gallery of dusky faces, Dinah, Julia, Sam, and James; old aunt Rebecca, with a yellow turban on her head; young Sarah, three feet high, bare-legged, bare-armed, in a torn, greasy calico dress, her only garment; young Toney, who had so much. India-rubber in his heels that he capered irrepressibly through the hall and executed a double-shuffle. While the grand stairway, leading to the halls above was piled with dark, eager faces, reminding one of the crowded, auditory looking upon Belshazzar's feast in the great picture of Allston,-fifteen, twenty, thirty thousand dollars' worth of bones, blood, and brains! The violinist was in trouble. The screws would not stick, and in spite of his spitting in the holes, his twisting and turning, he was obliged to stop in the middle of the dance. He made strenuous efforts to keep his instrument in tune. A man in shoulder-straps, leading a fair-haired, graceful maiden, his partner in the dance, with a clenched fist and an oath informed the musician that if he did n't fix that quick he would knock his head off! It was a little glimpse of the divine, beneficent missionary institution ordained of God for the elevation of the sons of Ham! It was not difficult to make a transition in thought to a South Carolina rice-swamp or Louisiana sugar-plantation or Arkansas cotton-field, where a master's passion was law, and where knocking off men's heads was not so rare a performance. Among the dusky crowd gazing in upon the waltzers was a girl, sixteen or seventeen years old, a brunette, with cherry lips, sparkling black eyes, and cheeks as fresh and fair as apricots. She was a picture of health. She gazed with evident delight, and yet there was always upon her countenance a shade of sadness. In form and feature she was almost wholly Anglo-Saxon, and more than Anglo-Saxon in beauty. I met her in the hall during the day having charge of a young child, and had marked her beauty, ease, grace, and in telligence, and supposed that she was a boarder at the hotel,the daughter or young wife of some officer, till seeing her the central figure of the dusky group. Then the thought came flashing, "She is a slave!" She could have joined in the cotillon with as much grace as any of the fair dancers. Her father, I learned, was a high-born Kentuckian, and her grandfather was from one of the first families of Virginia; but her great-great-great-grandmother was born in Africa, and that was the reason why she stood a silent spectator in the hall, instead of whirling with the gay colonel in the dance. CHAPTER X. FROM HARPER'S FERRY TO FREDERICKSBURG. RETURNING to Virginia I accompanied the army of the Potomac in the march from Berlin and Harper's Ferry to the Rappahannock. The roads were excellent, the days mild, the air clear. Beautiful beyond description the landscape, viewed from the passes of the Blue Ridge. Westward in the valley of the Shenandoah was Longstreet's corps, traced by rising clouds of dust and the smoke of innumerable campfires. Eastward was the great army of the Union, winding along the numerous roads, towards the south. Many of the soldiers had their pets, one had two yellow dogs in leadingstrings. A gray-bearded old soldier carried a young puppy with its eyes not yet open, in his arms as tenderly as if it were a child. A Connecticut boy had a little kitten on his shoulders, which kept its place contentedly. Occasionally the lad caressed it, while kitty laid its face against that of the beardless boy and purred with pleasure. The march was tediously slow. General McClellan was averse to making it at all. He had delayed from day to day, and from week to week, till ordered by the President to adHe had no well-considered plan of operations. vance. The President's patience was exhausted, and at Warrenton he was deprived of the command of the army. General Burnside, his successor, took the command reluctantly; but he was quick in deciding upon a plan. General McClellan's line of march was towards Gordonsville. Burnside decided to move upon Fredericksburg. The movement was made with great rapidity, and Burnside only failed of seizing the place because the pontoons were not there at the time appointed. Lee came and occupied the town, threw up his earthworks, and planted his batteries. Burnside planned to have Franklin cross the Rappahannock below Port Royal, Hooker above it, while Sumner was to cross opposite the town; but heavy storm frustrated the movement. It was generally supposed that the army would go into winter quarters, and many of the correspondents accordingly returned to their homes. My friend and companion in the West, Mr. Richardson, left the army of the Potomac in disgust, and proceeded West again in search of adventure. His wishes were more than gratified soon after at Vicksburg, where he fell into the hands of the Rebels, who boarded him awhile at the Libby in Richmond, and afterward at the Salisbury prison in North Carolina. He ungraciously turned his back upon his Rebel friends one night, took all his baggage, and left without paying his bills. He gained the Union lines in Tennessee after months of imprisonment, with his desires for adventure in that direction fully satisfied. Nearly one half of the correspondents with the various armies either fell into the hands of the Rebels or were wounded. Several died of diseases contracted in the malarious swamps. As a class they were daring, courageous, venturesome, always on the alert, making hard rides, day and night, on the battle-field often where the fire was hottest, writing their accounts seated on a stump, spreading their blankets where night overtook them, or frequently making all-night rides after a day of excitement, hardship, and exposure, that the public might have early information of what had transpired. Their statements were often contradictory. Those first received by the public were not unfrequently full of errors, and sometimes were wholly false, for the reason that many papers had a correspondent a few miles in rear of the army, at the base of supplies, who caught up every wild rumor and sent it flying over the land. Gold speculators improved every occasion to gull the public by false news. There is reason to believe that men in high official positions were in collusion with operators in bullion, to the mutual advantage of all concerned. The press of the country, reflecting the feelings of the people, pronounced the campaign at an end. The friends of General McClellan were clamorous for his return. Congress and political advisers in Washington demanded that Burnside should move somewhere. They knew nothing of the obstacles in his path. In a letter written on the 9th of December, 1862, the following view of the situation was presented by the correspondent of the Boston Journal: "It is a clear, cold morning. The sky is without a cloud. Standing near General Sumner's quarters, I have a wide sweep of vision. The quarters of the veteran general commanding the right grand division are in a spacious mansion, newly constructed, the property of a wealthy planter, whose estate is somewhat shorn of its beauty by the ravages of war. The fences are all gone, the forests are fast disappearing, the fine range of cedars which lined the Belleplain road are no longer to be seen. All around are the white tents of the command, the innumerable camp-fires sending up blue columns of smoke. The air is calm. You hear the rumbling of distant baggage-trains, the clatter of hundreds of axes felling the forests for fuel, the bugle-call of the cavalrymen, and the rat-a-plan of the drummers, and mingling with all, the steady, constant flow of the falling waters of the winding stream. "Looking far off to the southeast, across the intervale of the river, you see a white cloud of steam moving beneath the fringe of a forest. It is a locomotive from Richmond, dragging its train of cars with supplies for the Rebel camps. The forests and hills beyond are alive with men. Resting my glass against the side of the building to keep it steady, I can count the men grouped around the camp-fires, turning at times to keep themselves warm. Others are bringing in wood. An officer rides along. A train of wagons is winding down the hill toward the town. All along the range of hills are earthworks with sandbag embrasures, and artillery behind, not quaker guns, I think, but field artillery, so ranged that a movement directly across the river would be marching into the jaws of death, -as hazardous and destructive as the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava. -- "I know that there is a clamor for an onward movement, a desire and expectation for an advance; but I think there are few men in the country who, after taking a look at the Rebel positions, would like to lead in a movement across the stream. "Looking into the town of Fredericksburg we see but few smokes ascending from the chimneys, but few people in the streets. It is almost wholly deserted. The women and children have gone to Richmond, or else are shivering in camp. Close upon the river-bank on |