Part 2 — VIRGINIA.

One of the most curious and interesting results of that eclectic spirit which has brought into suggestive relations the different spheres of human knowledge and inquiry, is the application of geographical facts to historical interpretation. The comprehensive researches of Ritter and the scientific expositions of Humboldt enable us to recognize the vast influence of local conditions upon social development, and to account for the peculiar traits of special civilization by the distribution of land and water, and the agency of climate and position. In the calm retrospect of the present crisis of our national history, when the philosopher takes the place of the partisan and the exciting incidents of the present are viewed in the chastened light of the past, it will be seen and felt that a kind of poetical justice and moral necessity made Virginia the scene of civil and physical strife. Of all the States, she represents, both in her annals and her resources, her scenery, and her social character, the average national characteristics: natives of each section of the land find within her limits congenial facts of life and nature, of manners and industry: like her Southern sisters, she has known all the consequences of slavery—but at certain times and places, free labor has thriven; commerce and agriculture, the miner, the mariner, the tradesman, not less than the planter, found therein scope for their respective vocations; the life of the sea coast, of the mountains, and of the interior valleys—the life of the East, West, and Middle States was there reproduced in juxtaposition with that of the South. Nowhere in the land could the economist more distinctly trace the influence of free and slave labor upon local prosperity: nowhere has the aristocratic element been more intimately in contact with the democratic. Her colonial record indicates a greater variety in the original population than any other province: she has given birth to more eminent statesmen, has been the arena of more fierce conflicts of opinion, and is associated most directly with problems of government, of society, and of industrial experiment. On her soil were first landed African captives; and when the curse thus entailed was dying out, it was renewed and aggravated by the inducement to breed slaves for the cotton and sugar plantations. From Virginia flowed the earliest stream of immigration to the West, whereby a new and mighty political element was added to the Republic: there are some of the oldest local memorials of American civilization: for a long period she chiefly represented Southern life and manners to the North: placed between the extremes of climate—producing the staples of all the States, except those bordering on the Gulf—earlier colonized, prominent in legislation, fruitful in eminent men, she was more visited by travellers, more written about, better known, and therefore gathered to and grafted upon herself more of the rich and the reckless tendencies and traits of the country; and became thus a central point and a representative State—which destiny seems foreshadowed by her physical resources and her local situation. Except New England, no portion of our country has been more fully and faithfully illustrated as to its scenery, domestic life, and social traits, by popular literature, than Virginia. The original affinity of her colonial life with the ancestral traditions of England, found apt expression in Spenser's dedication of his peerless allegory to Elizabeth, wherein the baptism of her remote territory, in honor of her virginal fame, was recognized. The first purely literary work achieved within her borders was that of a classical scholar, foreshadowing the long dependence of her educated men upon the university culture of Great Britain; and those once admired sketches of scenery and character which gave to William Wirt, in his youth, the prestige of an elegant writer, found there both subjects and inspiration; while the American school of eloquence traces its early germs to the bar and legislature of the Old Dominion, where the Revolutionary appeals of Patrick Henry gave it a classic fame. The most prolific and kindhearted of English novelists, when he had made himself a home among us and looked round for a desirable theme on which to exercise his facile art, chose the Southampton Massacre as the nucleus for a graphic story of family life and negro character. The 'Swallow Barn' of Kennedy is a genuine and genial picture of that life in its peaceful and prosperous phase, which will conserve the salient traits thereof for posterity, and already has acquired a fresh significance from the contrast its pleasing and naive details afford to the tragic and troublous times which have since almost obliterated the traces of all that is characteristic, secure, and serene. The physical resources and amenities of the State were recorded with zest and intelligence by Jefferson before Clinton had performed a like service for New York, or Flint for the West, or any of the numerous scholars and writers of the Eastern States for New England. The very fallacy whereon treason based her machinations and the process whereby the poison of Secession was introduced into the nation's life-blood, found exposition in the insidious fiction of a Virginian—Mr. George Tucker—secretly printed years ago, and lately brought into renewed prominence by the rebellion. 'Our Cousin Veronica,' a graceful and authentic family history, from the pen of an accomplished lady akin to the people and familiar with their life, adds another vivid and suggestive delineation thereof to the memorable illustrations by Wirt, Kennedy, and James; while a score of young writers have, in verse and prose, made the early colonial and the modern plantation and waterplace life of the Old Dominion, its historical romance and social and scenic features, familiar and endeared; so that the annals and the aspects of no State in the Union are better known—even to the local peculiarities of life and language—to the general reader, than those of Virginia, from negro melody to picturesque landscape, from old manorial estates to field sports, and from improvident households to heroic beauties; and among the freshest touches to the historical and social picture are those bestowed by Irving in some of the most charming episodes of his 'Life of Washington.'

When the river on whose banks was destined to rise the capital of the State received the name of the English monarch in whose reign and under whose auspices the first settlers emigrated, and the Capes of the Chesapeake were baptized by Newport for his sons Charles and Henry, the storm that washed him beyond his proposed goal revealed a land of promise, which thenceforth beguiled adventure and misfortune to its shores. Captain John Smith magnified the scene of his romantic escape from the savages: 'Heaven and earth,' he wrote, 'seemed never to have agreed better to frame a place for man's commodious and delightful habitation.' To the wonderful reports of majestic forests, rare wild flowers, and strange creatures, such as the opossum, the hummingbird, the flying squirrel, and the rattlesnake—to the pleasures of the chase, and the curious traits of aboriginal life—were soon added the attractions of civic immunities and possibilities—free trade, popular legislative rule, and opportunities of profitable labor and social advancement. Ere long, George Sandys, a highly educated employée of the Government, was translating Ovid on the banks of the James river; industry changed the face of the land; a choice breed of horses, the tobacco culture, hunting, local politics, hospitality—churches after the old English model, manor houses with lawns, bricks, and portraits significant of ancestral models, justified the pioneer's declaration that Virginia 'was the poor man's best country in the world.' Beautiful, indeed, were the natural features of the country as described by the early travellers; auspicious of the future of the people as it expanded to the eye of hope, when the colony became part of a great and free nation. Connected at the north and east, by thoroughfare and watercourse, with the industrial and educated States of New England, the fertile and commercial resources of New York, and the rich coal lands and agricultural wealth of Pennsylvania; Maryland and the Atlantic providing every facility to foreign trade, and the vast and then partially explored domains of Kentucky and Ohio inviting the already swelling tide of immigration, and their prolific valleys destined to be the granary of the two hemispheres—all that surrounded Virginia seemed prophetic of growth and security within, the economist and the lover of nature found the most varied materials; with three hundred and fifty-five miles of extent, a breadth of one hundred and eighty-five, and a horizontal area of sixty-five thousand six hundred and twenty-four square miles—one district embracing the sea coast to the head of tidewater, another thence to the Blue Ridge, a third the valley region between the latter range and that of the Alleghanies, and a fourth the counties beyond them—every kind of soil and site, from ocean margin to river slope, from mountain to plain, are included within her limits: here, the roads stained with oxides, indicative of mineral wealth; there, the valleys plumed with grain and maize; the bays white with sails; the forest alive with game; lofty ridges, serene nooks, winding rivers, pine barrens, alluvial levels, sterile tracts, primeval woods—every phase and form of natural resource and beauty to invite productive labor, win domestic prosperity, and gratify the senses and the soul. Rivers, whose names were already historical—the James, the York, the Rappahannock, the Potomac, and the peaceful Shenandoah, flowing through its beautiful valley and connecting the base of the Blue Ridge with the Potomac; Chesapeake bay, a hundred and ninety miles from its entrance through Maryland and Virginia, on the one side, and the Roanoke, finding an outlet in Albemarle sound, while the Kanawha and Monongahela, as tributaries of the Ohio, on the other, keep up that communication and natural highway which links, in a vast silver chain, the separate political unities of the land. The hills ribbed with fine marble and pierced by salubrious springs; picturesque natural bridges, cliffs, and caves, described with graphic zeal by Jefferson, and the wild and mysterious Dismal Swamp, sung by Moore; the tobacco of the eastern counties, the hemp of lands above tidewater, the Indian corn, wheat, rye, red clover, barley, and oats, of the interior, and the fine breeds of cattle and horses raised beyond the Alleghany—are noted by foreign and native writers, before and immediately after the Revolution, as characteristic local attractions and permanent economical resources; and with them glimpses of manorial elegance, hospitality, and culture—which long made the life and manners of the State one of the most congenial social traditions of the New World.

Yet, as if prophetic of the long political issues of which she was destined to be the scene of conflict, the colonial star of Virginia was early obscured by misfortune. When John Smith left her shores for the last time in 1609, discontent and disaster had already marred the prospects of the new settlement; and, in half a year, Gates, Somers, Newport arrived to find but sixty colonists remaining, and they resolved to abandon the enterprise; but on encountering Delaware, they were induced to return, and Jamestown was again the scene of life and labor. Ten years of comparative success ensued; and then one hundred and sixty poor women were imported for wives, at a cost of about the same number of pounds of tobacco; but simultaneously with this requisite provision for domestic growth and comfort, the germ of Virginia's ruin came: a Dutch vessel entered the James river, bringing twenty African captives, which were purchased by the colonists. Two years later the Indians made a destructive foray upon the thriving village; the king became alarmed at the freedom of political discussion, dissolved the Virginia company, and appointed a governor and twelve councillors to rule the province;—the father's policy was followed by Charles the First, many of whose zealous partisans found a refuge from Cromwell in the province. At last came the Revolution and the Union. Meantime slavery was dying out; its abolition was desired; and had free labor then and there superseded it, far different would have been the destiny of the fair State; whose western portion affords such a contrast to that wherein this blight induced improvidence and deterioration, the tokens whereof were noted by every visitor in the spare and desultory culture of the soil, the neglected resources, the dilapidated fences and dwellings, and the absence of that order and comfort which inevitably attaches to legitimate industry and self-reliance. This melancholy perversion of great natural advantages was the result of slave breeding for the Southern market. Otherwise Virginia would have continued the prosperous development initiated in her colonial days. The exigencies of the cotton culture, rendered immensely profitable by a mechanical invention which infinitely lessened the cost of preparing the staple for the market, had thus renewed and prolonged the original and fast-decaying social and political bane of a region associated with the noblest names and most benign prospects. Chief-Justice Marshall aptly described to an English traveller this sad and fatal transition:

'He said he had seen Virginia the leading State for half his life; he had seen her become the second, and sink to be the fifth. Worse than this, there was no arresting her decline if her citizens did not put an end to slavery; and he saw no signs of any intention to do so, east of the mountains at least. He had seen whole groups of estates, populous in his time, lapse into waste. He had seen agriculture exchanged for human stock breeding; and he keenly felt the degradation. The forest was returning over the fine old estates, and the wild creatures which had not been seen for generations were reappearing; numbers and wealth were declining, and education and manners were degenerating. It would not have surprised him to be told that on that soil would the main battles be fought when the critical day should come which he foresaw.'

That day it is our lot to behold. Forced at the point of the bayonet to arrogate to herself the illegal claims she had vainly sought to establish by popular suffrage, as reserved rights, in 1787, and the resolutions of 1798, the Secession Ordinance was nominally passed and summarily enforced, despite the protests of the citizens and the withdrawal of the western counties; and thus the traitors of the Cotton States made Virginia the battle field between slaveocracy and constitutional government. As early as 1632 a fierce controversy for territorial rights occurred on the Chesapeake, when that portion of Virginia, now Maryland, was brought into dispute by Claiborne, who began to trade, notwithstanding the grant which Lord Baltimore had secured: this, the first conflict between the whites, and two Indian massacres, made desolate the region so lately devastated by the civil war. Nor was the original enjoyment of remarkable political rights coincident with American independence; for, while Charles the Second was an exile, and Parliament demoralized, the fugitive king still held nominal sway in Virginia; and when the flight of Richard Cromwell left the kingdom without a head, that distant colony was ruled by its own assembly, and enjoyed free suffrage and free trade: then came what is called Bacon's rebellion—an effective protest against oppressive prohibitions. Nor did these civil discords end with the Restoration; many old soldiers of Cromwell emigrated to Virginia, and, under their auspices, an insurrection 'against the tobacco plot' was organized; and this was followed by numerous difficulties in home legislation, by violent controversies with royal governors; deputies continually were sent to England to remonstrate with the king against 'intolerable grants' and the exportation of jailbirds. Their despotic master over the sea appropriated the lands of the colonists, while their own representatives monopolized the profits; cruel or obstinate was the sway of Berkeley, Spottwood, Dinwiddie, and Dunmore; and after the people had succumbed as regards military opposition, they continued to maintain their rights by legislative action. Under James the Second, Lord Howard repealed many of these conservative acts and prorogued the House of Burgesses. A respite, attested by glad acclaim, marked the accession of William and Mary, and the recall of Howard. Andros was sent over in 1692. The skirmish with Junonville initiated the French war and introduced upon the scene its most hallowed name and character, when Colonel Washington appeared first as a soldier, strove in vain against the ignorance and self-will of Dinwiddie, and shared Braddock's defeat, to be signally preserved for the grandest career in history.

And when the war of the Revolution gave birth to the nation, not only was Virginia the native State of its peerless chief, but some of its memorable scenes and heroes there found scope; Steuben and Lafayette there carried on military operations, there the traitor Arnold was wounded, Hamilton and Rochambeau gained historic celebrity, and there the great drama was closed by the surrender of Cornwallis. In the debates incident to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, there was manifested in Virginia that jealousy of a strong central government, which thwarted the wise advocacy and ignored the prophetic warnings of the best statesmen, thereby confirming the fundamental error destined, years after, to give facility to treasonable usurpation: the Constitution was only ratified, at last, by a majority of ten. In the war of 1812, Hampton, Craney Island, White House, and various places on and near the Potomac, since identified with fierce encounters and forays in the war of the rebellion, witnessed gallant deeds in behalf of the Republic. In 1829 a convention assembled in Virginia to modify the Constitution. Long having the most extensive territory and largest slaveholders, the aristocratic element disturbed and overmastered democratic principles. During Cromwell's rule, when virtually independent, Virginia proffered a fleet to the fugitive monarch; who, when restored, in gratitude ordered her arms to be quartered with those of England, Scotland, and Ireland; in exile even accepted her invitation to migrate thither and assume the privileges of royalty: coins of the Old Dominion yet testify this projected despotism. Instead of Dissenters as in New England, Quakers as in Pennsylvania, or Romanists as in Maryland, Virginia, from her earliest colonization, was identified with the Church of England. It was regarded, says one of her historians, as an 'unrighteous compulsion to maintain teachers; and what they called religious errors were deeply felt during the regal government:' the children of the more prosperous colonists were sent to England to be educated; their pursuits and habits, on returning, were unfavorable to study; and, therefore, the advantage thus gained was, for the most part, confined to 'superficial good manners,' and the ideal standard attained that of 'true Britons and true churchmen;' the former was a more cherished distinction there than elsewhere in America. In 1837 was copied from a tombstone in an old-settled part of the State, this inscription: 'Here lyes the body of Lieut. William Harris, who died May ye 16, 1608—a good soldier, husband, and neighbor: by birth a Briton.' In these facts of the past and normal tendencies we find ample means and motives to account for the anomalous political elements involved in the history—social and civic—of Virginia. While boasting the oldest university where four Presidents of the United States were educated, she sustained a slave code which was a bitter satire on civilized society: the law of entail long prevailed in a community ostensibly democratic, and only by the strenuous labors of Jefferson was church monopoly abolished. It is not surprising, in the retrospect, that her roll of famous citizens includes the noblest and the basest names which illustrate the political transitions of the land; the architects and subverters of free polity, the magnanimous and the perfidious. When the ameliorating influence of time and truth had, in a degree, harmonized the incongruous elements of opinion and developed the economical resources, while they liberalized the sentiments and habitudes of the people; when, says Caines, 'slavery, by exhausting the soil, had eaten away its own profits, and the recolonization by free settlers had actually begun, came suddenly the prohibition of the African slave trade, and nearly at the same time, the vast enlargement of the field for slavery, by the purchase of Louisiana; and these two events made Virginia again profitable as a means of breeding for exportation and sale at the South.

The future geographer who elaborately applies the philosophy of that science, as interpreted by its modern professors, to our own history, will find in the events of the last few years in Virginia the richest and most impressive illustrations of local and physical causes in determining political and social destinies. Between the eastern and western portion of that State it will be demonstrated that nature placed irreconcilable barriers to the supremacy of slave labor and slave property; and the economical value of each will be shown thus and there tested with emphatic truth; so that by the laws of physical geography the first effect of an appeal to arms to maintain the one, was to alienate, as a civic element, the other, and give birth to a new State, by virtue of the self assertion incident to the violation of a normal instinct and necessity of civilization.

What a change came over the scene when the grave civic interests so long and recklessly involved in the conflict of opinion were submitted to the arbitrament of battle! Along the river on whose shores the ashes of Washington had slept for more than half a century in honored security, batteries thundered upon each passing craft that bore the flag of the nation: every wood became a slaughter pen, every bluff a shrine of patriotic martyrdom; bridges were destroyed and rebuilt with alacrity; the sentinel's challenge broke the stillness of midnight; the earth was honeycombed with riflepits; campfires glowed on the hills; thousands perished in the marshes; creeks were stained with human blood; here sank the trench; there rose a grave mound or a fortress; pickets challenged the wanderer; every ford and mountain pass witnessed the clash of arms and echoed with the roar of artillery; the raid, the skirmish, the bivouac, the march, and the battery successively spread desolation and death; Arlington House, full of peaceful trophies, once dear to national pride, was the headquarters of an army; balloons hung in the sky, whence the movements of the foe were watched. Gaps and junctions were contested unto death; obscure towns gained historic names and bloody memories; and each familiar court-house and village came to be identified with valorous achievements or sanguinary disaster.

And this land of promise, this region which so long witnessed the extremes of political magnanimity and turpitude, this arena where the vital question of labor, as modified by involuntary servitude, and free activity, found its most practical solution—was, and is, legitimately, appropriately, and naturally, the scene of the fiercest strife for national existence—where the claims and the climax of freedom and faith culminated in all the desolation of civil war. A more difficult country for military operations can scarcely be imagined. Early in the struggle it was truly said:

'Virginia is the Switzerland of the continent—a battle field every three miles—a range of hills streaming where Hill may retire five miles by five miles till he reaches Richmond—a conquest, undoubtedly, if the North perseveres, but won at such a cost and with such time as to prolong unnecessarily the struggle. The Richmond of the South lies in the two millions of blacks that are within the reach of cannon of our gunboats in the rivers that empty into the Gulf.'

How wearisome the delays and how constant the privations of the army of occupation in such a region, wrote an experienced observer:

'Dwelling in huts, surrounded by a sea of mud, may appear to be very romantic—on paper—to some folks, but the romance of this kind of existence with the soldiers soon wears away, and to them any change must necessarily be for the better; they therefore hail with delight, as a positive relief, the opportunity once more to practise their drill which the recent change of weather has afforded them. For the last three months, the time of the soldier has passed heavily enough, with the long winter nights, and little else to relieve the monotony of his life but stereotyped guard duty.'

It would require volumes to describe the ravages of war in Virginia: let a few pictures, selected from sketches made on the spot, indicate the melancholy aspect of a domain, a few weeks or months before smiling in peace and productiveness. The following facetious but faithful statement, though confined to a special, applies to many districts:

'The once neat court-house stands by the roadside a monument to treason and rebellion, deprived of its white picket fence, stripped of window blinds, cases, and dome, walls defaced by various hieroglyphics, the judge's bench a target for the 'expectorating' Yankee;' the circular enclosure occupied by the jury was besmeared with mud, and valuable documents, of every description, scattered about the floor and yard—it is, indeed, a sad picture of what an infatuated people will bring upon themselves. In one corner of the yard stands a house of records, in which were deposited all the important deeds and papers pertaining to this section for a generation past. When our advance entered the building, they were found lying about the floor to the depth of fifteen inches or more around the doorsteps and in the dooryard. It is impossible to estimate the inconvenience and losses which will be incurred by this wholesale destruction of deeds, claims, mortgages, etc. I learned that a squadron of exasperated cavalry, who passed this way not long since, committed the mischief. The jail across the way, where many a poor fugitive has doubtless been imprisoned for striking out for freedom, is now used as a guardhouse. As I write, the bilious countenance of a culprit is peeping through the iron grates of a window, who, may be, is atoning for having invaded a henroost or bagged an unsuspecting pig. Our soldiers have rendered animal life almost extinct in this part of the Old Dominion. Indeed, wherever the army goes, there can be heard on every side the piercing wail of expiring pork, the plaintive lowing of a stricken bovine, or suppressed cry of an unfortunate gallinacious.'

Here is a scene familiar to many a Union soldier who gazed at sunset upon the vast encampment:

'Along the horizon a broad belt of richest amber spread far away toward north and south; and above, the spent, ragged rain clouds of deep purple, suffused with crimson, were woven and braided with pure gold. Slowly from the face of the heavens they melted and passed away as darkness came on, leaving the clear sky studded with stars, and the crescent moon shedding a soft radiance below. I climbed to the top of a hill not far off, and looked across the country. On every eminence, in every little hollow almost, were innumerable lights shining, some thick and countless as stars, indicating an encampment; others isolated upon the outskirts; here and there the glowing furnace of a bakery; the whole land as far as the eye could see looking like another heaven wherein some ambitious archangel, covetous of creative power, had attempted to rival the celestial splendors of the one above us. There was no sound of drum or fife or bugle; the sweet notes of the 'good-night' call had floated into space and silence a half hour before; only on the still air were heard the voices of a hand of negroes chanting solemnly and slowly, to a familiar sacred tune, the words of some pious psalm.'

We may realize the effect of the armed occupation upon economical and social life by a few facts noted after a successful raid:

'In the counties visited there were but few rebels found at home, except the very old and the very young. In nine days' travel I did not see fifty able-bodied men who were not in some way connected with the army. Nearly every branch of business is at a standstill. The shelves in stores are almost everywhere empty; the shop of the artisan is abandoned and in ruins. The people who are to be seen passively submit to all that emanates from Richmond without a murmur; they are for the most part simple minded, and ignorant of all that is transpiring in the great theatre about them. An intelligent-looking man in Columbia laughed heartily when told that Union troops occupied New Orleans—Jefferson Davis would let them know it were such the fact; and I could not find a man who would admit that the Confederates had ever been beaten in a single engagement. These people do not even read the Richmond papers, and about all the information they do obtain is what is passed about in the primitive style, from mouth to mouth. Before this raid they believed that the Union soldiers were anything but civilized beings, and were stricken with terror when their approach was heralded. Of six churches seen in one day, in only one had there been religious services held within six months. One half at least of the dwelling houses are unoccupied, and fast going to decay.'

Not all the land is ill adapted to cool actions and strategy; there are sections naturally fortified, and these have been the scenes of military vicissitudes memorable, extreme, picturesque, and fatal. Here is an instance:

'There is no town in the United States which exhibits more deplorably the ravages of war than Harper's Ferry. More than half the buildings are in ruins, and those now inhabited are occupied by small dealers and peddlers, who follow troops, and sell at exorbitant prices, tarts and tinware, cakes and crockery, pipes and poultry, shoes and shirts, soap and sardines. The location is one of peculiar beauty. The Potomac receives the Shenandoah at this point; each stream flowing through its own deep, wild, winding valley, until it washes the base of the promontory, on the sides and summit of which are scattered the houses and ruins of the town. The rapids of the rivers prevent navigation, and make the fords hazardous. The piers of an iron bridge and a single section still remaining, indicate a once beautiful structure; and a pontoon substitute shows the presence of troops. An occasional canal boat suggests a still continued effort at traffic, and transport railcars prove action in the quartermaster's department. The mountains are 'high and hard to climb.' The jagged sides of slate rock rise vertically, in many places to lofty heights, inducing the sensation of fear lest they should fall, while riding along the road which winds under the threatening cliffs. The mountains are crowned with batteries, 'like diadems across the brow,' and the Hottentoty-Sibley tents dot the ridges like miniature anthills.'

But within and around the capital of Virginia cluster the extreme associations of her history: these memories and memorials of patriotism hallow the soil whereon the chief traitors inaugurated their infamous rule; the trial of Burr and the burning of the theatre are social traditions which make Richmond a name fraught with tragic and political interest; her social and forensic annals are illustrious; and, hereafter, among the many anomalies of the nation's history, few will more impress the thoughtful reminiscent than that a city eminent for social refinement and long the honored resort of the most eminent American statesmen and jurists, the seat of elegant hospitality and the shrine of national fame, was, for years, desecrated by the foulest prisons, filled with brave American citizens, who were subjected to insults and privations such as only barbarians could inflict, for no cause but the gallant defence of the national honor and authority against a slaveholders' rebellion.

But perhaps no coincidence is more impressive in the late experience of a Union soldier in Virginia than the associations then and there awakened by the recurrence of the anniversary of the birth of her noblest son and our matchless patriot:

'The 22d of February, 1863—the anniversary of Washington's birthday—will long be remembered,' writes one, 'by the Army of the Potomac. Encamped, as it is, on the very spot where he—'whom God made childless that a nation might call him father'—passed most of his youthful days, the thoughts of all naturally revert to the history of that great man, and particularly to that part of his early life, when, within the sacred precincts of home, a mother's care laid the foundation of that high moral character which in after life gave tone to both his civil and military career. Within one mile of the spot where I am now writing these lines, George Washington lived from the fourth to the sixteenth year of his age. The river, the hills, and dales, now so familiar to the soldiers composing this army, were the same then as to-day, and were the scene of his early gambols, his youthful joys and sorrows. Over these hills he wandered in the manly pursuits for which he was at that early period distinguished above his fellows, and which prepared him for enduring the hardships of the position he was destined to fill; here, too, is where tradition says he accomplished the feat of throwing a stone across the Rappahannock, and here, too, stood the traditional cherry tree, about the destruction of which with his little hatchet he would not utter a falsehood. Yonder, just across the Rappahannock, in a small, unostentatious burying ground, the immortal remains of 'Mary, mother of Washington,' were buried—sacred spot, now desecrated by the presence of the enemies of those principles which her honored son spent the energies of his life to establish for the benefit of all mankind. When we think for what Washington took up arms against the mother country, and what, by his example and teachings, he sought to perpetuate forever, and see the fratricidal hand raised to destroy the fair fabric he helped to rear, we feel something as though an omnipotent power would here intervene, and here on this sacred spot overthrow the enemies of this land without the further sacrifice of blood.'

Quite a different and more recent local association is thus recorded:

'The second time that I stood here was nigh three years ago, when I spoke to you in relation to John Brown, then in a Virginia jail. How great the result of that idea which he pressed upon the country! Do you know with what poetic justice Providence treats that very town where he lay in jail when I spoke to you before? The very man who went down from Philadelphia to bring his body back to his sad relatives—insulted every mile of the road, his life threatened, the bullets whistling around his head—that very man, for eight or ten months, is brigadier-general in command of the town of Charlestown and Harper's Ferry. By order of his superior officers, he had the satisfaction of finding it his duty, with his own right hand, to put the torch to that very hotel into which he had been followed with insult and contumely, as the friend of John Brown; and when his brigade was under orders to destroy all the buildings of that neighborhood, with reverential care he bade the soldiers stop to spare that engine house that once sheltered the old hero. I do not know any history more perfectly poetic than of that single local instance given us in three short years. Hector Tindale, the friend of John Brown, who went there almost with his life in his right hand, commands, and his will is law, his sword is the guarantee of peace, and by his order the town is destroyed, with the single exception of that hall which John Brown's presence has rendered immortal.'

The graphic details furnished by the army correspondents to the daily press of the North, reveal to us in vivid and authentic terms the change which war has wrought in Virginia. The condition of one 'fine old mansion' is that of hundreds. On the banks of the Rappahannock and in the vicinity of Fredericksburg is, for instance, an estate, now called the Lacy House, the royal grant whereof is dated 1690. The bricks and the mason work of the main edifice are English; the situation is beautiful; the furniture, conservatories, musical instruments, every trait and resource suggest luxury. After the battle of Fredericksburg, the Lacy House became a hospital: and a spectator of the scene thus describes it:

'The parlors, where so often had the fairest and brightest of Virginia's daughters, and her bravest and most chivalric sons, met to enjoy the hospitalities of the liberal host, and to join in the mazy dance 'from eve till rosy morn'—the dining room, where so many lordly feasts had been served—the drawing room, wherein the smiling host and hostess had received so many a welcome guest—the bed rooms, from the bridal chamber where the eldest scion of the house had first clasped in his arms the wife of his bosom, to the low attic where the black cook retired after her greasy labors of the day, all were closely crowded with the low iron hospital beds. These halls, which had so often reëchoed the sound of music, and of gayest voices, and also of those lower but more sacred tones that belong to lovers, now resounded with shrieks of pain, and with the lower, weaker groans of dying men.

'The splendid furniture was put to strange uses—the sideboard of solid rosewood, made in those honest days before cabinet makers had learned the rogue's trick of veneering, instead of being crowded with generous wines, or with good spirits that had mellowed for years in the cellars, was now crowded in every shelf with forbidding-looking bottles of black draughts, with packages of salt and senna, and with ill-omened piles of raking pills, perhaps not less destructive in their way than shot and shell of a more explosive sort. The butler's pantry and store rooms had their shelves and drawers and boxes filled, not with jellies and marmalades and preserves, and boxes of lemons and preserved ginger and drums of figs, and all sorts of original packages of all sorts of things toothsome and satisfying to the palate—but even her scammony and gamboge, and aloes and Epsom salts, and other dire weapons, only wielded by the medical profession, had obtained exclusive sway.

'On many a retired shelf, and in many an odd corner, too, I saw neglected cartridge boxes, cast-off belts, discarded caps, etc., which told, not of the careless and heedless soldier, who had lost his accoutrements, but of the dead soldier, who had gone to a land where it is to be hoped he will have no further use for Minié rifle balls or pipe-clayed crossbelts. I saw, too, with these other laid-aside trappings, dozens and hundreds of Minié and other cartridges, never now to be fired at an enemy by the hand that had placed them in the now discarded cartridge box.

'The walls of the various rooms of the Lacy House, like those of most of the old houses in Virginia, are ceiled up to the top with wood, which is painted white. There is a heavy cornice in each room; there are the huge old-fashioned fireplaces, the marble mantelpieces over the same, and in the main dining room, where it was the custom for the men to remain after dinner, and after the ladies had retired, was a curious feature to be observed, that I have never seen but once or twice. Over the marble mantel, but quite within reach, runs a mahogany framework intended for the reception of the toddy glasses, after the various guests shall have finished the generous liquor therein contained.

'There are still some vestiges of the family furniture remaining—some rosewood and mahogany sideboards, tables, bedsteads, etc., which the family have not been able to remove, and which the occupying soldiers have found no use for. The most notable of these articles is a musical instrument, which may be described as a compound harp-organ. It is, in fact, an upright harp, played by keys which strike the wires by a pianoforte action, which has an ordinary piano keyboard. This is, in fact, the earliest form of the modern pianoforte. Then, in the same instrument is an organ bellows and pipes, the music from which is evoked by means of a separate keyboard, the bellows is worked by a foot treadle, like that most detestable abomination known to moderns as a melodeon. Thus, in the same instrument, the performer is supposed to get the powers and effect both of an upright piano and a small organ. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this instrument (which, doubtless, originally cost at least $3,000) is now utterly useless, the wires, many of them, being broken, and the whole machine being every way out of order. The maker's name is set down as 'Longman & Broderup, 26 Cheapside, No. 13 Haymarket, London.' The poor old thing has doubtless been in the Lacy House for more than a hundred years. It has been rudely dragged from its former place of honor, and now stands in the middle of the floor. The spot it formerly occupied has been lately filled by a hospital bed, on which a capital operation was performed. The spouting blood from the bleeding arteries of some poor patient has covered the wall with crimson marks. In fact, everywhere all over the house, every wall and floor is saturated with blood, and the whole house, from an elegant gentleman's residence, seems to have been suddenly transformed into a butcher's shamble. The old clock has stopped; the child's rocking horse is rotting away in a disused balcony; the costly exotics in the garden are destroyed, or perhaps the hardiest are now used for horse posts. All that was elegant is wretched; all that was noble is shabby; all that once told of civilized elegance now speaks of ruthless barbarism.'

Take another illustration—that of the incongruous juxtaposition of old family sepulchres and fresh soldiers' graves—the associations of the past and the sad memorials of recent strife even among the dead:

'Yesterday,' writes a thoughtful observer, from near Stafford Court House, in December, 1862, 'for the first time since leaving Harper's Ferry, I met with an evidence of the old-time aristocracy, of which the present race of Virginians boast so much and possess so little. About four miles from here, standing remote and alone in the centre of a dense wood, I found an antiquated house of worship, reminding one of the old heathen temples hidden in the recesses of some deep forest, whither the followers after unknown gods were wont to repair for worship or to consult the oracles. On every side are seen venerable trees overtowering its not unpretentious steeple. The structure is built of brick (probably brought from England), in the form of a cross, semi-gothic, with entrances on three sides, and was erected in the year 1794. On entering, the first object which attracted my attention was the variously carved pulpit, about twenty-five feet from the floor, with a winding staircase leading to it. Beneath were the seats for the attendants, who, in accordance with the customs of the old English Episcopacy, waited upon the dominie. The floor is of stone, a large cross of granite lying in the centre, where the broad aisles intersect. To to the left of this is a square enclosure for the vestrymen, whose names are written on the north side of the building. The reader, if acquainted with Virginia pedigrees, will recognize in them some of the oldest and most honorable names of the State—Thomas Fitzhugh, John Lee, Peter Hedgman, Moot Doniphan, John Mercer, Henry Tyler, William Mountjoy, John Fitzhugh, John Peyton. On the north hall are four large tablets containing Scriptural quotations. Directly beneath is a broad flagstone, on which is engraved with letters of gold, 'In memory of the House of Moncure.' This smacks of royalty. Parallel to it lies a tombstone with the following inscription:

Sacred to the memory of William Robison, the fourth son of H. and E. Moncure, of Windsor Forest, born the 27th of January, 1806, and died 13th of April, 1828, of a pulmonary disease, brought on by exposure to the cold climate of Philadelphia, where he had gone to prepare himself for the practice of medicine. Possessed of a mind strong and vigorous, and of a firmness of spirit a stranger to fear, he died manifesting that nobleness of soul which characterized him while living, the brightest promise of his parents, and the fondest hopes of their afflicted family.

'Led, doubtless, by the expectation of discovering buried valuables, some one has removed the stone from its original position, and excavated the earth beneath. Close by the entrance on the north side are three enclosed graves, where sleep those of another generation. The brown, moss-covered tombstones appear in strong contrast to a plain pine board at the head of a fresh-made grave alongside, and bearing the following inscription: 'Henry Basler, Company H, One Hundred and Eighteenth Pennsylvania Volunteers.'

Loyal during the civil war of England, virtually an independent State under Cromwell, it is the remarkable destiny of Virginia, so called in honor of Queen Elizabeth's unmarried state, to have given birth to the spotless chief who conducted to a triumphant issue the American Revolution—to the orator who, more than any individual, by speech alone kindled the patriotic flame thereof—to the jurist whose clear and candid mind and sagacious integrity gave dignity and permanence to constitutional law—and to the statesman who advocated and established the democratic principle and sentiment which essentially modified and moulded the political character and career of the Republic, and he was the author of that memorable Declaration of Independence which became the charter of free nationality. From 1606, when three small vessels, with a hundred or more men, sailed for the shores of Virginia under the command of Christopher Newport, and Smith planned Jamestown, to the last pronunciamento of the rebel congress of Richmond, the documentary history of Virginia includes in charter, code, report, chronicle, plea, and protest, almost every possible element and form of political speculation, civic justice, and seditious arrogance: and therein the philosopher may find all that endears and hallows and all that disintegrates and degrades the State as a social experiment and a moral fact: so that of all the States of the Union her antecedents, both noble and infamous, indicate Virginia as the most appropriate arena for the last bitter conflict between the great antagonistic forces of civil order with those of social peace and progress. There where Washington, a young surveyor, became familiar with toil, exposure, and responsibility, he passed the crowning years of his spotless career; where he was born, he died and is buried; where Patrick Henry roamed and mused until the hour struck for him to rouse, with invincible eloquence, the instinct of free citizenship; where Marshall drilled his yeoman for battle, and disciplined his judicial mind by study; where Jefferson wrote his political philosophy and notes of a naturalist; where Burr was tried, Clay was born, Wirt pleaded, Nat Turner instigated the Southampton massacre, Lord Fairfax hunted, and John Brown was hung, Randolph bitterly jested, and Pocahontas won a holy fame—there treason reared its hydra head and profaned the consecrated soil with vulgar insults and savage cruelty; there was the last battle scene of the Revolution and the first of the Civil War; there is Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Yorktown, and there also are Manassas, Bull Run, and Fredericksburg; there is the old graveyard of Jamestown and the modern Golgotha of Fair Oaks; there is the noblest tribute art has reared to Washington, and the most loathsome prisons wherein despotism wreaked vengeance on patriotism; and on that soil countless martyrs have offered up their lives for the national existence, whose birth-pangs Virginia's peerless son shared, and over whose nascent being he kept such holy and intrepid vigil, bequeathing it as the most solemn of human trusts to those nearest to his local fame, by whom, with factious and fierce scorn, it has been infamously betrayed on its own hallowed ground; whose best renown shall yet be that it is the scene, not only of Freedom's sacrifice, but of her most pure and permanent triumph.