and
there were not many of the secession cockades to be met; but a few were
flaunted by beardless young men who should that day have been arrested
and thrown into the Old Capitol; and every foot of space in Willard's
and the other leading houses was full all day long of a moving, surging,
anxious and excited crowd, all talking, nobody listening, everybody
inquiring, many significant hints, a few threats, an occasional quarrel
and the interference of the police, but not much violence and no
bloodshed. The evening shut down stormy, as to the national atmosphere,
and I went home to supper impressed with the belief that the morrow
could not pass off quietly--a belief strengthened by the fears of Scott;
which were shown in the calling out of the volunteer militia in large
force,--by the tap of the drum and the challenge of the sentry, which
could be heard all around Capitol Hill,--and by the knowledge that files
of regulars were barracked at different places on the Hill, ready for
service in the morning and so posted as to command every avenue of
ingress to the inauguration.

"One of the high winds which belong to the normal condition of
Washington began blowing at dark, and it increased to a gale during the
evening, rattling shutters, creaking signs and filling the air with
clouds of blinding dust which went whirling around the Capitol as if
they would bury it. This added materially to the appearance and feeling
of desolation, especially when the white stone being worked for the
Extension would gleam and disappear through the cloud, and suggest
graveyards and monuments for the national greatness that seemed to be
falling. Then at dusk we had the report that several hundreds of armed
horsemen had been discovered by one of Scott's scouts, lying in wait
over Anacosti, and ready to make a descent upon the doomed city the
moment that it should be buried in slumber. Many doubted this report,
but some believed it; and I have an impression that hundreds went to bed
in Washington that night with a lingering doubt whether they would not
be involved, before morning, or at all events before the noon of the
next day, in such scenes of violence and bloodshed as the continent had
never yet witnessed.

"I went over to the Capitol after tea, and took the place that had been
kindly kept for me in the reporters' gallery of the Senate. No matter
what occurred there--history has made it a part of our painful record,
and that is quite suffici