right. Here fifteen or twenty were crowded together, and, in the
burning atmosphere, they stripped themselves stark naked, so that when
in the morning the cell-doors were opened, they came forth as from the
grave, begging for death. There are women's cells too; for this great
and valiant government recognized women as belligerents, and locked them
up close to a sentry's cartridge, so that, in the bitterness of
solitude, they were unsexed, and railed, and blasphemed, like wanton
things. On the pavements before the jail, were hidden numberless guards,
who shot at every rag fluttering from the cages, and all this little
circle of death and terror was enacted close to the bright river, and
airy pediment of that high capitol, where bold men hoped by war to wring
from a reluctant Union, acknowledgment of arrogant independence to rein
civilization as it pleased, and warp the destinies of our race.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE RUINS OF THE REBELLION.

When Richmond was a plain city, a county seat, and the residence of a
governor and commonwealth legislature, its enterprise was as gradual as
its hospitality and private probity were steadfast. It was always a
fierce political arena, and its two great journals, the _Whig_ and
_Enquirer_, were not more violently partisan than its hustings. In the
latter its debaters were wide-famed. No such "stump" has ever existed in
America, commencing with Patrick Henry, whose eloquence was as intense
and telling as his statesmanship was errant and inconsistent, and
passing through the shrill and bitter apostrophies of John Randolph down
to the latest era of Henry A. Wise, the most sufferable and interminable
campaign orator extant, and John Minor Botts, scarcely his inferior.
With us, out of door rhetoric is dry, studied, and argumentative; here
an inspiration, based upon feeling rather than reason, and so earnest
that it knew no personal friendship where its political affinities
stopped. Whig and Democrat were not men of the same race or family in
Richmond; they passed each other on the sidewalk with a sneer or a
scowl, and knew no coalition even in the house of God. Even when the
Whig party as an organization deceased, the Whigs, as individuals,
retained their traditional antipathy, and the advent of secession was
decried by these, not because they loved the Union more, but the
triumphant Democracy the less. Separation was a feature of the hated
faith, and no good could come out of Nazareth.