1863 The Rebirth of a Nation

Blow Ye the Trumpet, Blow January 1, 1863, was a crisp, sparkling day in Washington. A throng of holiday promenaders strolled along Pennsylvania Avenue enjoying the fresh breezes and brilliant sunshine. The air was alive with the tinkle of organ grinders playing "Ben Bolt" and "Captain Jinks," the cries of street vendors hawking rock candy and roasted chestnuts, the shouts of drivers jockeying their rigs through the crush of traffic on the muddy boulevard. Eager bootblacks scurried to and fro, polishing the shoes of sauntering swells, while on every street corner leather-lunged newsboys bawled the morning dailies. Here and there ex-soldiers with empty sleeves or trouser legs panhandled for money, but the passing pedestrians paid them little heed, ambling cheerfully down the broad sidewalks, "each and all seeming bent on the enjoyment of the festivities of the day according to their varying tastes and fancies." For some that meant going to Gautier's, Hammack's, or Wormley's restaurant to feast on platters of pate de foie gras, stewed terrapin, and fried Chesapeake oysters. For others it meant attending a matinee performance at Grover's National Theater, where Miss Lucille Western, the "pearl of the American stage," was appearing in "Cynthia the Gipsy, or The Flower of the Forest." For still others--off-duty army and navy officers, mostly--it meant guzzling ten-cent cocktails in the boisterous barroom at Willard's Hotel, playing faro or chuck-a-luck in one of the gambling halls on Pennsylvania Avenue's seedy south side, or dropping by one of the scores of bawdy houses located in the flourishing red-light district between Ninth and Fifteenth Streets. The most popular destination, however, was 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Thousands of Washingtonians congregated there to take part in a holiday tradition almost as old as the Republic itself--shaking the hand of the president at the annual New Year's reception. Well before noon, the hour at which the White House would be opened to the public, a great crowd had gathered in Lafayette Square to watch the cream of Washington officialdom--the members of the diplomatic corps, the justices of the Supreme Court, the generals and admirals of the armed forces--arrive to pay their respects to Mr. Lincoln. One after another the gleaming black carriages rolled up the avenue, turned into the White House drive, rattled to a stop beside the north portico, and discharged their loads of ambassadors, ministers, and charges d'affaires onto the sun-splashed gravel. They were followed by the members of the judiciary, led by tottering eighty-five-year-old Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, author of the infamous Dred Scott decision, which had done so much to assure the outbreak of hostilities between North and South. The heirs to those hostilities, the high-ranking officers of the army and navy, came next, strutting into the mansion in an auriferous blaze of braid and epaulets. Finally, at twelve o'clock precisely, it was time for the ordinary citizenry to be received. The gates swung open, and the huge crowd surged forward, swamping the twenty-man detail of District police that had been posted on the White House grounds to keep order. In a welter of torn coattails and crushed bonnets, the excited mob fetched up against the north entry, where a beardless youth in an ill-fitting uniform was standing guard. This military cerberus brandished his rifle and exclaimed in a squeaky voice: "My gosh! Gentlemen, will you stan' back? You can't get in no faster by crowdin'!" To which appeal, an amused newspaperman reported, "the gay and festive crowd responded by flattening him against a pilaster, never letting him loose until his fresh country face was dark with an alarming symptom of suffocation." Once inside, the visitors removed their hats and gloves, adjusted wrinStevens, Joseph E. is the author of '1863 The Rebirth of a Nation' with ISBN 9780553378368 and ISBN 0553378368.