Charles Carleton Coffin: War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman. William Elliot Griffis

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СКАЧАТЬ over the rough draft with him in his study. The letter was circulated for signatures by Worcester Webster, of Boscawen, distantly related to Daniel. It is in the published works of the great statesman, edited by Mr. Everett, together with his reply."

      In May, 1854, Carleton saw the Potomac and the Capitol at Washington for the first time. The enlargement of the house of the National Legislature had not yet begun. He studied the paintings in the rotunda, which were to him a revelation of artistic power. He spent a long time before Prof. Robert W. Weir's picture of the departure of the Pilgrims for Delfshaven.

      Here are some of his impressions of the overgrown village and of the characters he met:

      "Washington was a straggling city, thoroughly Southern. There was not a decent hotel. The National was regarded as the best. Nearly all the public men were in boarding-houses. I stopped at the Kirkwood, then regarded as very good. The furniture was old; there was scarcely a whole chair in the parlor or dining-room. It was the period of the Kansas struggle. The passions of men were at a white heat. The typical Southern man wore a broad-brimmed felt hat. Many had long hair and loose flowing neckties. There was insolence and swagger in their deportment towards Northern men.

      "I spent much time in the gallery of the Senate. Thomas Benton, of Missouri, was perhaps the most notable man in the Senate. Slidell, of Louisiana, whom I had seen in New Hampshire the winter before, speaking for the Democracy, and Toombs, of Georgia, were strongly marked characters. Toombs made a speech doubling up his fists as if about to knock some one down."

      From Washington, Carleton went to Harrisburg, noticing, as he passed over the railway, the difference between free and slave territory. "A half dozen miles from the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania was sufficient to change the characteristics of the country." The Pennsylvania railway had just been opened, and Altoona was just starting. Carleton visited the iron and other industries at Pittsburg, and described his journey and impressions in a series of letters to the Boston Journal. Having inherited from his father eighty acres of land in Central Illinois, near the town of Lincoln, he went out to visit it. At Chicago, a bustling place of 25,000 inhabitants, he found the mud knee-deep. Great crowds of emigrants were arriving and departing. Going south to La Salle he took steamer on the Illinois River to Peoria, reaching there Saturday night. Not willing to travel on Sunday, he went ashore. After attending service at church, he asked the privilege of playing on the organ. A few minutes later, he found a large audience listening with apparent pleasure.[Back to Content]

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