The American Civil War

October 24th.—The heaviest blow which has yet been inflicted on the administration of justice in the United States, and that is saying a good deal at present, has been given to it in Washington. The judge of whom I wrote a few days ago in the habeas corpus case, has been placed under military arrest and surveillance by the Provost-Marshal of the city, a very fit man for such work, one Colonel Andrew Porter. The Provost Marshal imprisoned the attorney who served the writ, and then sent a guard to Mr. Merrick’s house, who thereupon sent a minute to his brother judges the day before yesterday stating the circumstances, in order to show why he did not appear in his place on the bench. The Chief Judge Dunlop and Judge Morsell thereupon issued their writ to Andrew Porter greeting, to show cause why an attachment for contempt should not be issued against him for his treatment of Judge Merrick. As the sharp tongues of women are very troublesome, the United States officers have quite little harems of captives, and Mrs. Merrick has just been added to the number. She is a Wickliffe of Kentucky, and has a right to martyrdom. The inconsistencies of the Northern people multiply ad infinitum as they go on. Thus at Hatteras they enter into terms of capitulation with officers signing themselves of the Confederate States Army and Confederate States Navy; elsewhere they exchange prisoners; at New York they are going through the farce of trying the crew of a C. S. privateer, as pirates engaged in robbing on the high seas, on “the authority of a pretended letter of marque from one Jefferson Davis.” One Jeff Davis is certainly quite enough for them at present.

Colonel and Senator Baker was honoured by a ceremonial which was intended to be a public funeral, rather out of compliment to Mr. Lincoln’s feelings, perhaps, than to any great attachment for the man himself, who fell gallantly fighting near Leesburg. There is need for a republic to contain some elements of an aristocracy if it would make that display of pomp and ceremony which a public funeral should have to produce effect. At all events there should be some principle of reverence in the heads and hearts of the people, to make up for other deficiencies in it as a show, or a ceremony. The procession down Pennsylvania Avenue was a tawdry, shabby string of hack carriages, men in light coats and white hats following the hearse, and three regiments of foot soldiers, of which one was simply an uncleanly, unwholesome looking rabble. The President, in his carriage, and many of the ministers and senators, attended also, and passed through unsympathetic lines of people on the kerbstones, not one of whom raised his hat to the bier as it passed, or to the President, except a couple of Englishmen and myself who stood in the crowd, and that proceeding on our part gave rise to a variety of remarks among the bystanders. But as the band turned into Pennsylvania Avenue, playing something like the minuet de la cour in Don Giovanni, two officers in uniform came riding up in the contrary direction; they were smoking cigars; one of them let his fall on the ground, the other smoked lustily as the hearse passed, and reining up his horse, continued to puff his weed under the nose of President, ministers, and senators, with the air of a man who was doing a very soldierly correct sort of thing.

Whether the President is angry as well as grieved at the loss of his favourite or not, I cannot affirm, but he is assuredly doing that terrible thing which is called putting his foot down on the judges; and he has instructed Andrew Porter not to mind the writ issued yesterday, and has further instructed the United States Marshal, who has the writ in his hands to serve on the said Andrew, to return at to the court with the information that Abraham Lincoln had suspended the writ of habeas corpus in cases relating to the military.

October 23rd.—Up at six, waiting for horse and man. At eight walked down to stables. No one there. At nine became very angry—sent messengers in all directions. At ten was nearly furious, when, at the last stroke of the clock, James, with his inexpressive countenance, perfectly calm nevertheless, and betraying no symptom of solicitude, appeared at the door leading my charger. “And may I ask you where you have been till this time?” “Wasn’t I dressing the horse, taking him out to water, and exercising him.” “Good heavens! did I not tell you to be here at seven o’clock?” “No, sir; Carl told me you wanted me at ten o’clock, and here I am.” “Carl, did I not tell you to ask James to be round here at seven o’clock.” “Not zeven clock, sere, but zehn clock. I tell him, you come at zehn clock.” Thus at one blow was I stricken down by Gaul and Teuton, each of whom retired with the air of a man who had baffled an intended indignity, and had achieved a triumph over a wrong-doer.

The roads were in a frightful state outside Washington—literally nothing but canals, in which earth and water were mixed together for depths varying from six inches to three feet above the surface; but late as it was I pushed on, and had got as far as the turn of the road to Rockville, near the great falls, some twelve miles beyond Washington, when I met an officer with a couple of orderlies, hurrying back from General Banks’s head-quarters, who told me the whole affair was over, and that I could not possibly get to the scene of action on one horse till next morning, even supposing that I pressed on all through the night, the roads being utterly villanous, and the country at night as black as ink; and so I returned to Washington, and was stopped by citizens, who, seeing the streaming horse and splashed rider, imagined he was reeking from the fray. “As you were not there,” says one, “I’ll tell you what I know to be the case. Stone and Baker are killed; Banks and all the other generals are prisoners; the Rhode Island and two other batteries are taken, and 5000 Yankees have been sent to H___ to help old John Brown to roast niggers.”