# Life in the Open Air, and Other Papers/Fortress Monroe

This is an unfinished account of the author’s experiences with the U.S. Army at Fort Monroe, Virginia in 1861 at the start of the American Civil War. This work was published posthumously in 1863 as part of the anthology Life in the Open Air and other papers. The previous part of Life in the Open Air and Other papers, titled “Washington as a Camp”, is prologue to this narrative.
Winthrop died at the Battle of Big Bethel on June 10, 1861, a few days after writing the last section of this narrative.
FORTRESS MONROE.
FORTRESS MONROE.
[The sketches of the campaign in Virginia, which Winthrop had commenced in the "Atlantic Monthly," would have been continued, had he lived. Immediately upon his arrival at Fort Monroe he had commenced a third article. It is inserted here just as he left it, with one brief addition only to make his known meaning more clear. The part called "Voices of the Contraband" was written previously, and is not paged in the manuscript. It was to have been introduced into the article; but it is placed first here, that the sequence of the paper, as far as the author had written it, may remain undisturbed.]
VOICES OF THE CONTRABAND.
Solvuntur risu tabulæ. An epigram abolished slavery in the United States. Large wisdom, stated in fine wit, was the decision, "Negroes are contraband of war." "They are property," claim the owners. Very well! As General Butler takes contraband horses used in transport of munitions ​of war, so he takes contraband black creatures who tote the powder to the carts and flagellate the steeds. As he takes a spade used in hostile earth-works, so he goes a little farther off and takes the black muscle that wields the spade. As he takes the rations of the foe, so he takes the sable Soyer whose skilful hand makes those rations savory to the palates and digestible by the stomachs of the foe, and so puts blood and nerve into them. As he took the steam-gun, so he now takes what might become the stoker of the steam part of that machine and the aimer of its gun part. As he takes the musket, so he seizes the object who in the Virginia army carries that musket on its shoulder until its master is ready to reach out a lazy hand, nonchalantly lift the piece, and carelessly pop a Yankee.
[The third number of the author's Sketches of the Campaign in Virginia begins here.]
PHYSIOGNOMY OF FORTRESS MONROE.
The "Adelaide" is a steamer plying between Baltimore and Norfolk. But as Norfolk has ceased to be a part of the United States, and is nowhere, the "Adelaide" goes no farther than Fortress Monroe, Old Point Comfort, the chief somewhere of this region. A lady, no doubt Adelaide herself, appears in alto rilievo on the paddle-box. She has a short waist, long skirt sans crinoline, leg-of-mutton ​sleeves, lofty bearing, and stands like Ariadne on an island of pedestal size, surrounded by two or more pre-Raphaelite trees. In the offing comes or goes a steamboat, also pre-Raphaelite; and if Ariadne Adelaide’s Bacchus is on board, he is out of sight at the bar.
Such an Adelaide brought me in sight of Fortress Monroe at sunrise, May 29, 1861. The fort, though old enough to be full-grown, has not grown very tall upon the low sands of Old Point Comfort. It is a big house with a basement story and a garret. The roof is left off, and stories between basement and garret have never been inserted.
But why not be technical? For basement read a tier of casemates, each with a black Cyclops of a big gun peering out; while above in the open air, with not even a parasol over their backs, lie the barbette guns, staring without a wink over sea and shore.
In peace, with a hundred or so soldiers here an there, this vast enclosure might seem a solitude. Now it is a busy city, — a city of one idea. I seem to recollect that D’Israeli said somewhere that every great city was founded on one idea and existed to develop it. This city, into which we have improvised a population, has its idea, — a unit of an idea with two halves. The east half is the recovery of Norfolk, — the west half the occupation of Richmond; and the idea complete is the education of Virginia’s unmannerly and disloyal sons. ​
Why Secession did not take this great place when its defenders numbered a squad of officers and three hundred men, is mysterious. Floyd and his gang were treacherous enough. What was it? Were they imbecile? Were they timid? Was there, till too late, a doubt whether the traitors at home in Virginia would sustain them in an overt act of such big overture as an attempt here? But they lost the chance, and with it lost the key of Virginia, which General Butler now holds, this 30th day of May, and will presently begin to turn in the lock.
Three hundred men to guard a mile and a half of ramparts! Three hundred to protect some sixty-five broad acres within the walls! But the place was a Thermopylæ, and there was a fine old Leonidas at the head of its three hundred. He was enough to make Spartans of them. Colonel Dimmick was the man, — a quiet, modest, shrewd, faithful, Christian gentleman; and he held all Virginia at bay. The traitors knew, that, so long as the Colonel was here, these black muzzles with their white tompions, like a black eye with a white pupil, meant mischief. To him and his guns, flanking the approaches and ready to pile the moat full of Seceders, the country owes the safety of Fortress Monroe.
Within the walls are sundry nice old brick houses for officers’ barracks. The jolly bachelors live in the casemates and the men in long barracks, now not so new or so convenient as they might be. In ​fact, the physiognomy of Fortress Monroe is not so neat, well-shorn, and elegant as a grand military post should be. Perhaps our Floyds, and the like, thought, if they kept everything in perfect order here, they, as Virginians, accustomed to general seediness, would not find themselves at home. But the new régime must change all this, and make this the biggest, the best equipped, and the model garrison of the country. For, of course, this must be strongly held for many, many years to come. It is idle to suppose that the dull louts we find here, not enlightened even enough to know that loyalty is the best policy, can be allowed the highest privilege of the moral, the intelligent, and the progressive,—self-government. Mind is said to march fast in our time; but mind must put on steam here-abouts to think and at for itself, without stern schooling, in half a century.
But no digressing! I have looked far away from the physiognomy of the fortress. Let us turn to the
PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE COUNTRY.
The face of this county, Elizabeth City by name, is as flat as a Chinaman's. I can hardly wonder that the people here have retrograded, or rather, not advanced. This dull flat would make anybody dull and flat. I am no longer surprised at John Tyler. He has had a bare blank brick house, entitled sweetly Margarita Cottage, or some such tender ​epithet, at Hampton, a mile and a half from the fort. A summer in this site would make any man a bore. And as something has done this favor for His Accidency, I am willing to attribute it to the influence of locality.
The country is flat; the soil is fine sifted loam running to dust, as the air of England runs to fog; the woods are dense and beautiful, and full of trees unknown to the parallel of New York; the roads are miserable cart-paths; the cattle are scalawags; so are the horses, not run away; so are the people; black and white, not run away; the crops are tolerable, where the invaders have not trampled them.
Altogether the whole concern strikes me as a failure. Captain John Smith & Co. might as well have stayed at home, if this is the result of the two hundred and thirty years’ occupation. Apparently the colonists picked out a poor spot; and the longer they stayed, the worse fist they made of it. Powhattan, Pocahontas, and the others without pantaloons and petticoats, were really more serviceable colonists.
The farm-houses are mostly miserably mean habitations. I don’t wonder the tenants were glad to make our arrival the excuse for running off. Here are men claiming to have been worth forty thousand dollars, half in biped property, half in all other kinds, and they lived in dens such as a drayman would have disdained and a hod-carrier only accepted on compulsion.
PHYSIOGNOMY OF WATER.
Always beautiful! The sea cannot be spoilt. Our fleet enlivens it greatly. Here is the flag-ship "Cumberland" vis-à-vis the fort. Off to the left are the prizes, unlucky schooners, which ought to be carrying pine wood to the kitchens of New York, and new potatoes and green peas for the wood to operate upon. This region, by the way, is New York's watermelon patch for early melons; and if we do not conquer a peace here pretty soon, the Jersey fruit will have the market to itself.
Besides stately flag-ships and poor little bumboat schooners, transports are coming and going with regiments or provisions for the same. Here, too, are old acquaintances from the bay of New York,—the "Yankee," a lively tug,—the "Harriet Lane," coquettish and plucky,—the "Catiline," ready to reverse her name and put down conspiracy.
On the dock are munitions of war in heaps. Volunteer armies load themselves with things they do not need, and forget the essentials. The unlucky army-quartermaster's people, accustomed to the slow and systematic methods of the by-gone days at Fortress Monroe, fume terribly over these cargoes. The new mind and the new manners of the new army do not altogether suit the actual men and manners of the obsolete army. The old men and the new must recombine. What we want now is the vigor of fresh people to utilize the experience of the experts. The Silver-Gray Army needs a frisky ​element interfused. On the other hand, the new army needs to be taught a lesson in method by the old; and the two combined will make the grand army of civilization.
THE FORCES.
When I arrived, Fort Monroe and the neighborhood were occupied by two armies.
1. General Butler
2. About six thousand men, here and at Newport's News.
Making together more than twelve thousand men.
Of the first army, consisting of the General, I will not speak. Let his past supreme services speak for him, as I doubt not the future will.
Next to the army of a man comes the army of men. Regulars a few, with many post officers, among them some very fine and efficient fellows. These are within the post. Also within is the Third Regiment of Massachusetts, under Colonel Wardrop, the right kind of man to have, and commanding a capital regiment of three months' men, neatly uniformed in gray, with cocked felt hats.
Without the fort, across the moat, and across the bridge connecting this peninsula of sand with the nearest side off the mainland, are encamped three New York regiments. Each is in a wheat-field, up to its eyes in dust. In order of precedence they come One, Two, and Five; in order of personal ​splendor of uniform, they come Five, One, Two; in order of exploits they are all in the same negative position at present; and the Second has done rather the most robbing of hen–roosts.
The Fifth, Duryea's Zouaves, lighten up the woods brilliantly with their scarlet legs and scarlet head-pieces.
[These last words were written upon the day that the attack in which the author fell was arranged.]