Among other excursions to camps and places of interest in the
neighborhood of Washington, we went, one day, to Alexandria. It is a
little port on the Potomac, with one or two shabby wharves and docks,
resembling those of a fishing-village in New England, and the respectable
old brick town rising gently behind. In peaceful times it no doubt bore
an aspect of decorous quietude and dulness; but it was now thronged with
the Northern soldiery, whose stir and bustle contrasted strikingly with
the many closed warehouses, the absence of citizens from their customary
haunts, and the lack of any symptom of healthy activity, while
army-wagons trundled heavily over the pavements, and sentinels paced the
sidewalks, and mounted dragoons dashed to and fro on military errands. I
tried to imagine how very disagreeable the presence of a Southern army
would be in a sober town of Massachusetts; and the thought considerably
lessened my wonder at the cold and shy regards that are cast upon our
troops, the gloom, the sullen demeanor, the declared or scarcely hidden
sympathy with rebellion, which are so frequent here. It is a strange
thing in human life, that the greatest errors both of men and women often
spring from their sweetest and most generous qualities; and so,
undoubtedly, thousands of warm-hearted, sympathetic, and impulsive
persons have joined the Rebels, not from any real zeal for the cause, but
because, between two conflicting loyalties, they chose that which
necessarily lay nearest the heart.
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