The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-04-09
new STORIES OF THEW WAR
PLACES WHERE THE UNION WAS
TIE STAKE.


Fields Re Saw When They We're
Wet With Gore-As They Were-As
They Are-Scars Left by the Awful
Conflict Nearly All Effaced by Nat
ure's Healing Hand.
tCopuf0hf.I
New York, April ST. have never been
farther south than Washington, +" is q phrase
not infrequently heard from northern peo-
pie. In point of fact Washington is not
south at all. 1t Is cosmopolitan as far as it
can be; 10 wants to be entirely 80. aud has
not an element Of the south about it, The
south begins just across the river at Alex
andria. Not that Maryland is not largely
the south, for 1t is; but Washington is not
Maryland any more than it Is Charleston
or New OrleAns.) The south proper begins
south Of the Potomac, and any one VINO
leaves the populous and thrifty-looklnR
country to the north, and crossing the wide,
beautiful river. with the white marble CAPT.
toll to the left and the towering marble
Washington shaft TO the right, will become
sensible that he has reached different sec
ton. A different landscape stretches around
him, different air is in his nostrils, diff
ferent sound in his ears.
Once crossing the long bridge after
months OF soJouTn in a foreign land, q
stranger behind me tapped me on the shout,
der and said: 81 have bottle here VIII
you Join meP 1t may have been a mere
coincidence, but though ! did not accept his
Invitation or even approve Of 1t It gave me
q home feeling.
The difference IN the landscape is not
greater than that in the general manner
and tone Of life. Alexandria, lust across
the river from Washington, is as If one
should cross London bridge and enter the
Welsh town Dolgelly or step over the Port
del Alma into Rouen. Alexandria. Gull
pepper, Charlottesville. Fredericksburg, Ash
land, Richmond-they are all in the same
key, some villages, some citiest but all have
the same atmosphere. The past Is more
vivid than the present, the future Is the IN
known. It is the same way with the coun-
try. Pines and brown sedge cover fields
within plain sight of the Washington shaft,
and ten miles out the country where IN
titled, is not easily dlstinguishAble from that
a thousand miles south.
RICH IN HISTORIC ASSOCIATIONS.
This commonplace looking country. how
ever, is far from being commonplace.
Alexandria, with its quaint quietude and
cobble paved streets. still marked with the
roots made by the rails Of the street car
were pulled up, was town whsn Braddock
rode so bravely northward to capture the
French fort on the Monongahela. Brad
docks road, continuing the street, still runs
over the hill 20 the northwestward, and the
old house is pointed out where the British
general stayed. The church where his
volunteer aid, who gave the name 20 the
great city yonder, and to whose memory
the shaft towers, worshiped in after years
still stands with that massive sturdiness
which gave even unpretentious buildings
Of that period the beauty OF dignity. just
down the White river an hours sail is his
home, where he lived q Virginiau gentle
man, and his tomb, to which men gather
as a Mecca dear TO all the faithful who love
freedom and honor nobility OF soul. Gruston
hall, where George Mason lived, who wrote
the first written constitution ever drafted,
is near at hand and all the country round,
poor and commonplace as 1t appears, is
filed with historical associations.
Across the river here came the greatest
armies that have ever stood on American
soil, and for four years this was the way 10
the battle field. Just little to the west is
L al Run, where on that summer Sunday
Il rning, now & generation ago. though the
memory of it is so vivid, Beauregard, Just
gone to his tomb, almost the last amcng the
survivors of his rank in the great struggle:
and Johnston almost next TO the last; and
jackson, who will survive them both, met
the army marching on to Richmond and
spraug into fame, suddenly changing the
affair from a holiday eucampment into the
bitterest war Of modern times. Then later
on where the fields are 80 quiet now was
fought another even more sauEunAry bat
tie, when men lay 80 thick that, it is said.
they were actually pilsd up on each other
1t Is curious how often different battles were
fought on the SAME ground.
Here to the south was another road, and
il we follow it we come along the margin
OF the Potomac 70 the quiet little town Of
Fredericksburg, quieter If possible even
than Alexandria. Here before the war was
an almost unique town, with a society the
like OF which was elsewhere found only in
country ueighborhooda. The gentry of the
Rsppahaunock had their residences here,
somewhat as on q more splendid scale the
Mississippi planters had theirs at Natchez.
George Washington went to school here
and mere his mother lived and died In
quaint little old house, with It's garden be-
hind it. as it was when she received Lafay-
cite there. flower pot in hand. Not long
since gang of spectators by a
sharp trick thought they had secured
the little tomb and unfinished monu-
ment, and making them special
feature OF q brazen corner lot advertise
1nent, they prepared 10 "cryn them for a
sale in Washington on the day of a great
celebration. This was a little more than
Fredericksburg could stand and there was
an excitement in the place such as had not
beer there since the days when armies used
60 appear on the nights yonder and open
their guns upon the place. Indeed there
was more excitement, for Gen. Dabney st.
Maury tells how during Burnside's bonn
bardment one of the old gentlemen of the
place, a church warden of st. Georges,
took his chair out aud sat all day in his gar
den to show his unooncern. Commodore
Maury was born In this quiet town, and
Lewis Herndon, who gave a friend his
watch and last message to his young wife
and went down with his ship as calm as if.'he
had been sailing into port.
ENsANGUINED FREDERICKSBURG.
Down the river, where it widens out. is
Westmoreland the birthplace of Washing
ton and the Lees. Some years ago, q re-
publican representative in congress from
Now England having slurred at Virginia.
Judge Critcher, who then represented Vest
morelaud in the House, rose and stated that
from within circle of twenty miles in his
own county had come George Washington,
Arthur Lee, Charles Lee, Light Horse
Harry" Richard Henry Lee and Robert z,
Lee, while only "A little outside of that
radius had come Thomas jefferson, James
Madison, James Monroe, and he might have
added Paul Jones, Matthew F. Maury and
Lewis Herndon. 1t was a convincing
reply.