Aside from the unfinished government buildings there was not a pretense of architecture in all Washington. There was nothing beautiful there. The very atmosphere seemed sickly; fever, malaria, were everywhere. It was the one city in all creation to get out of as soon as possible.
Once I tried to get a glimpse of the President. I failed. The White House gates were held by sentries. "Why do you want to see that old Ape?" said a man to me one day. I was shocked, and would like to have killed him. But he was not alone in his vileness. Thousands in Washington affected to despise Lincoln. I wondered then that it was regarded safe for him to appear in public. One day a carriage rolled rapidly up the avenue in front of the National. I heard some men cry, "Look, the President!" I glanced quickly. A tall, dark man, wearing a silk hat sat in the carriage; at his side a lady.
In a moment they were out of sight. There was not a cheer, not a hat touched, not a hand waved, and yet _that was Abraham Lincoln passing_, soon to be the greatest man in history. A little wrangle and almost a fist-fight between some bystanders on the pavement followed; one party denouncing the President for freeing the "damned niggers"; another thanking God for the President's noble deed. Such scenes were going on everywhere all over the capital, pro and con. Approval and hatred. The best praised, the worst abused mortal in America was just entering on his second term at the White House. I never even had a glimpse of the kindly face again.
At last my accounts were ready. "But your regiment," said the Assistant War Secretary, "does not exist. What was left of them were all put into a cavalry troop long ago. _You are the last man of the regiment._" Across the face of my paper he wrote, "_Discharged as a supernumerary officer._" That paper lies before me while I write. I was paid off in shining greenbacks for all the time I had been in prison.
As to the eighty comrades who had been captured with me that 25th of November in the assault on Missionary Ridge, all but sixteen were dead. Nine of my old Company B of the Fifth Regiment were taken prisoners, and only one of them had survived the horrors of Andersonville. Poor Cartwright died not long after, and I alone of the little band was left to tell the story.