of Washington, night and day, were thronged with army wagons. All
through the city military huts and military tents were to be seen,
pitched out among the mud and in the desert places. Then there was
the chosen locality of the teamsters and their mules and horses--a
wonderful world in itself; and all within the city! Here horses and
mules lived--or died--sub dio, with no slightest apology for a
stable over them, eating their provender from off the wagons to
which they were fastened. Here, there, and everywhere large houses
were occupied as the headquarters of some officer, or the bureau of
some military official. At Washington and round Washington the army
was everything. While this was so, is it to be conceived that
Congress should ask questions about military matters with success?

All this, as I say, filled me with sorrow. I hate military
belongings, and am disgusted at seeing the great affairs of a nation
put out of their regular course. Congress to me is respectable.
Parliamentary debates--be they ever so prosy, as with us, or even so
rowdy, as sometimes they have been with our cousins across the
water--engage my sympathies. I bow inwardly before a Speaker's
chair, and look upon the elected representatives of any nation as
the choice men of the age. Those muddy, clattering dragoons,
sitting at the corners of the streets with dirty woolen comforters
around their ears, were to me hideous in the extreme. But there at
Washington, at the period of which I am writing, I was forced to
acknowledge that Congress was at a discount, and that the rough-shod
generals were the men of the day. "Pack them up and send them in
boxes to their several States." It would come to that, I thought,
or to something like that, unless Congress would consent to be
submissive. "I have yet to learn--!" said indignant members,
stamping with their feet on the floor of the House. One would have