Siege of Washington by Lockwood John; Lockwood Charles; & Charles Lockwood

Author:Lockwood, John; Lockwood, Charles; & Charles Lockwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA - OSO
Published: 2011-10-16T16:00:00+00:00

Sunday, April 21

“A Real State of Siege”

On Sunday morning, the city “seemed very quiet,” wrote Lucius Chittenden in his diary. A week had passed since news of the fall of Fort Sumter had reached Washington, but looking out from the window of his boarding house at Fourteenth and K streets, two blocks from the Treasury, Chittenden observed, “I can hardly appreciate that we are in the midst of all the din and bustle of preparation for war.”1

The calm of the early morning, however, belied the anxiety that was felt in every neighborhood and continued to prey on the apprehensions of the city’s residents. Rumors of attack, commonplace for several days, had now been magnified by the city’s nearly complete isolation from the North. Sporadic telegraph service was its only tenuous connection to the rest of the Union. “Dangers were thickening around the Federal city in all directions,” recalled Frederick Seward. “It was realized that Washington was isolated, and beleaguered by its enemies.”2

The loss of mail service the day before meant that residents could not send letters to family and friends, nor of course receive their replies. Many administration officials had already been separated from their families, because they had come to Washington alone, given the risk of war and the city’s unhealthy living conditions. For Frances “Fanny” Seward, wife of Secretary Seward (and mother of Frederick), “These were terrible days of suspense.” She had remained in Elmira, New York, where their other son, William H. Seward, Jr., regularly visited the telegraph office in case one of his father’s telegraphs arrived. No messages got through that week.3

From Boston, Edward Everett, the storied Massachusetts politician and orator, fretted over the safety of his daughter and her family in Washington. In a letter to his son Willy dated April 21, Everett wrote, “If the city becomes the theatre of war while they are there, the situation will be too fearful to be described. We must leave them in the hands of a merciful Providence. I would fly to them if I saw any means of being useful to them.”4

With Washington cut off, “the wildest rumors gained credence,” Frederick Seward recalled.5 “A mob was reported to be coming over from Baltimore to burn the public buildings and sack the town. Rebel vessels were declared to be coming up from Norfolk to bombard it. Rebel troops were asserted to be marching up from Richmond and down from Harper’s Ferry to take possession.” Residents congregated at street corners to share the latest news or rumors, according to Seward, “exchanging in low tones their forebodings of disaster or their hopes for relief.”6

Under such trying circumstances, residents—from ordinary citizens to cabinet members and President Lincoln himself—suffered through what John Nicolay described as “a dreary and anxious Sunday.”7 The government unwittingly contributed to this apprehension when it closed public amusements such as theaters that day. While this decision was meant to reduce the potential for riots growing out of large crowds, it denied the public one way to forget the troubling events for a few hours.

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