Peculiarities of American Cities. Glazier Willard W.
city for the Relay House, on the Baltimore and Ohio Road, for the purpose of seizing and protecting that point, in order to cut off communications with Washington by that route.
For a week an unparalleled excitement prevailed in Baltimore, which was succeeded by a counter-revolution, when the volunteer militia were dismissed, and a large number of troops landed at Fort McHenry and shipped for Washington, from Locust Point. On the fifth of May General Butler removed a portion of his troops to Baltimore, and they were permitted to enter and remain in the city without disturbance. As they proceeded on their way to Federal Hill, they were even greeted with cheers, while ladies at windows and doors waved their handkerchiefs and applauded. On the sixteenth of May the passenger trains between Baltimore and Washington resumed their regular trips. On the twenty-seventh of June, Marshal of Police Kane was arrested and escorted to Fort McHenry, on the charge of being at the head of an unlawful combination of men organized for resistance to the laws of the United States and the State of Maryland. On the first of July the Commissioners of Police were arrested, for having acted unlawfully. On the sixteenth of July General Dix was put in command of the troops stationed at Baltimore, and the city thenceforth remained tranquil. At the fall elections a full vote was cast, which resulted in the Union candidates receiving a very large majority. At the meeting of the Legislature, it appropriated seven thousand dollars for the relief of the families of the Massachusetts troops killed and wounded at Baltimore on April nineteenth.
On June thirtieth, 1863, Major General Schenck, in command at Baltimore, put that city and Maryland under martial law. The value of merchandise exported that year from Baltimore was $8,054,112, and her imports during the same time were $4,098,189, showing that although on the borderland of strife, her commerce was in an exceedingly healthy condition. During July a number of her citizens were arrested, on a charge of being disloyal to the government. On the Fourth of July all citizens were required by the Commander to show their colors, from ten o'clock A.M. to six o'clock, P.M.; an absence of the national flag being considered tantamount to a confession of disloyalty. In 1864 the State adopted a new Constitution, which conferred freedom upon the slaves within her borders, and in November a Freedman's Bureau was established by Major General Wallace, having its headquarters at Baltimore.
The following year saw the close of the war, and Baltimore, which had not suffered like her sister cities at the South, her port being free from blockade, but had rather witnessed increased prosperity arising from the demands of the war, continued her prosperous career. Although many violent disunionists had found their homes within the city, the popular sentiment had grown strongly in favor of the North, and Baltimore had come to see that she had little to lose and much to gain by the reestablishment of the Union.
The bitterness of the old war times has passed away, and, as if to emphasize this fact, the Grand Army of the Republic was invited to hold a reunion in Baltimore in September, 1882. Accepting the invitation, her citizens vied with each other in honoring the veterans of the war, and made their visit a regular ovation. Of the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, who had passed through Baltimore on that fateful day in April, twenty-one years before, and who suffered from the fury of an ungoverned mob, only one member attended the reunion, Captain C. P. Lord, a resident of Vineland, New Jersey. He was lionized on every hand.
This Grand Army reunion had many pleasant and amusing features. Here men met each other again who had last parted on the battlefield or in a Southern prison. Here the dead seemed to come to life, and the lost were found. Many officers and soldiers of the Confederate army were also present, and it was as satisfactory as curious, as more than once happened during this occasion, to have two men meet and clasp hands in a cordial greeting, as one of them said to the other, "The last time we met I tried to put a bullet hole through you on a battlefield;" or, "I took you prisoner when I saw you last;" or, "This empty sleeve, or these crutches, I must thank you for."
The gathering was one which will long be remembered by Union and Confederate soldiers, and by the citizens of Baltimore as well. It was the inauguration of an era of good feeling between the North and the South. All personal and sectional enmity had died out, and this gathering joined those who had represented, on one side the North and on the other the South, in that great intestine struggle which is now so long past, and the terror of which, thank God, is being gradually obliterated by time from our memories, in new fraternal bonds, which are a good augury for the preservation of our Union. When soldiers who suffered so much at each other's hands, who were stirred by all the evil passions which war develops, and who bore the brunt of the conflict, offering all, if need be, as a sacrifice on the altar of the cause they had espoused, can so forget the past, and shaking hands over the chasm which divided them, look forward to a happy and concordant future, surely civilians should be willing to bury the hatred and prejudice which has so embittered the past, and live only for a common country, made of many parts whose interests are identical.
CHAPTER VI.
CHARLESTON
First Visit to Charleston. – Jail Yard. – Bombardment of the City. – Roper Hospital. – Charleston During the War. – Secession of South Carolina. – Attack and Surrender of Fort Sumter. – Blockade of the Harbor. – Great Fire of 1861. – Capitulation in 1865. – First Settlement of the City. – Battles of the Revolution. – Nullification Act. – John C. Calhoun. – Population of the City. – Commerce and Manufactures. – Charleston Harbor. – "American Venice." – Battery. – Streets, Public Buildings and Churches. – Scenery about Charleston. – Railways and Steamship Lines. – An Ancient Church. – Magnolia Cemetery. – Drives near the City. – Charleston Purified by Fire.
My first introduction to the city of Charleston can scarcely be said to have been under propitious circumstances. True, a retinue of troops conducted my companions and myself, with military pomp, to our quarters in the city. But these quarters, instead of being any one of its fine hotels, were none other than the Charleston Jail Yard, for the year was 1864, and we were prisoners of war.
After a varied experience of prison life at Richmond, Danville, Macon and Savannah, I had been sent, with a number of others, to Charleston, South Carolina, to be placed under the fire of our batteries, which were then bombarding the city. We had received more humane treatment at Savannah than at any previous place of detention; therefore it was with a sinking of the heart that we found ourselves, when we arrived at our destination, thrown into the jail yard at Charleston, which was the grand receptacle of all Union prisoners in that city. The jail was a large octagonal building, four stories high, surmounted by a lofty tower. A workhouse and a gallows also occupied the yard. The jail building was for the accommodation of criminals, military prisoners, and Federal and Rebel deserters, all of whom at least had the advantage of shelter from sun and storm. The war prisoners were permitted the use of the yard only, which was in the most filthy condition conceivable, having been long used as a prison-pen, without receiving any cleaning or purification whatever. The only shelter afforded us were the remnants of a few tents, which had been cut to pieces, more or less, by former prisoners, to make themselves clothing.
This jail yard was in the southeastern portion of the city, and apparently directly under the fire of our batteries on Morris Island. But though the shells came screaming over our heads, and proved a subject of interest, discussion, and even mathematical calculation among the prisoners, who were thankful for anything which should take their minds, even momentarily, from the misery which they endured, so carefully were they aimed, not to do us mischief, that though they exploded all about us – in front, behind, and on either side – not one of them fell within the prison enclosure. The scene at night was of peculiar beauty. These messengers of death presented the spectacle of magnificent fireworks, and every explosion sounded as the voice of a friend to us, assuring us that the great Northern army was still exerting itself to crush out the rebellion and open our prison doors and set us free.
Reaching Charleston and its jail yard September twelfth, 1864, on the twenty-ninth I was transferred to the Roper Hospital, having given my parole that I would not attempt to escape. The quarters here were so much more comfortable that it was almost like a transition from hell to heaven. Leaving behind me the filthiness of the jail yard, and my bed there on the chill, bare ground, where I had protection against neither heat nor cold, storm nor sunshine, to be permitted the freedom of the beautiful garden of the hospital, and to sleep