Every Drop of Blood by Edward Achorn

Author:Edward Achorn [Achorn, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802148766
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2020-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

ANDY AIN’T A DRUNKARD

Saturday, noon, March 4, 1865

Well-dressed white men and women, eager to get out of the rain and the muck, swarmed to the doors at the northern end of the Capitol building, the only access that morning. Union soldiers were guarding the doors, and only those who bore a VIP ticket— the “talismanic pass,” as the newspapers put it—could gain entrance. An “oratorical captain” bellowed at the crowd: “Ladies and gentlemen, my orders from the Sergeant-at-Arms are to let no more in at present, and those orders I shall obey.” At intervals, the line moved, and the captain spoke again: “Ah, ladies and gentlemen, this restriction is only temporary. The Sergeant-at-Arms now says that you may pass in. But allow me to say that under no circumstances can anybody enter without a ticket. Move on. Please to move on.” Even illustrious guests found it exceedingly difficult to get in. Between nine and ten a.m., former Massachusetts governor John H. Clifford found “such a crowd” of people “of very distinguished consideration” on the Capitol steps “as I never before encountered.” After his friend Samuel Hooper, a congressman from his state, somehow made it inside, Clifford had to clamber into the building through a window—doing so “with a degree of ability that would… surprise you,” he informed his wife.

At a quarter to noon, the procession featuring the presidential carriage—minus the president—was still not yet in sight, and people began to feel uneasy. “If Old Abe don’t arrive here soon, we won’t have any President,” one man in the crowd said. “Beg your pardon, Andy Johnson will be President until Lincoln’s sworn in,” another jested. With time running out, the closed carriage broke free from a parade that seemed to be going at its own speed and “dashed through the mud” to the eastern front of the Capitol, trailed by a squad of dragoons and the mounted parade marshals, bedecked in yellow scarfs. “This was all the simple pageant which accompanied the President’s wife to the door. It was more than republican in its simplicity. It was really democratic,” the New York Herald declared.

Other carriages had been driving up in rapid succession, dropping off passengers as close as they could get. As noon approached, Noah Brooks wrote, “flocks of women streamed around the Capitol, in most wretched, wretched plight; crinoline was smashed, skirts bedaubed, and moire antique, velvet, laces and such dry goods were streaked with mud from end to end.” With his VIP pass, the actor John Wilkes Booth slid indoors, walking among women who had found the weather exceedingly annoying. “The mud in the city of Washington on that day,” Brooks marveled, “certainly excelled all the other varieties I have ever seen before or since, and the greatest test of feminine heroism—the spoiling of their clothes—redounded amply to the credit of the women who were so bedraggled and drenched on that memorable day.” The Herald reporter savored the “grand national display” of women’s ankles as they lifted their skirts to ascend the stairs.

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