76 POLITICAL LIFE-II 



doubtedly have followed: either the Union would have 

 been permanently dissolved, or it would have been re- 

 established by anchoring slavery forever in the Consti- 

 tution. Never was there a greater escape. 



On March 1, 1857, I visited Washington for the first 

 time. It was indeed the first time I had ever trodden 

 the soil of a slave State, and, going through Baltimore, 

 a sense of this gave me a feeling of horror. The whole 

 atmosphere of that city seemed gloomy, and the city of 

 Washington no better. Our little company established 

 itself at the National Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, then 

 a famous hostelry. Henry Clay had died there not long 

 before, and various eminent statesmen had made it, and 

 were then making it, their headquarters. 



On the evening of my arrival a curious occurrence 

 showed me the difference between Northern and Southern 

 civilization. As I sat in the reading-room, there rattled 

 upon my ear utterances betokening a vigorous dispute in 

 the adjoining bar-room, and, as they were loud and long, 

 I rose and walked toward the disputants, as men are wont 

 to do on such occasions in the North; when, to my sur- 

 prise I found that, though the voices were growing stead- 

 ily louder, people were very generally leaving the room; 

 presently, the reason dawned upon me: it was a case in 

 which revolvers might be drawn at any moment, and the 

 bystanders evidently thought life and limb more valuable 

 than any information they were likely to obtain by re- 

 maining. 



On the evening of the third of March I went with the 

 crowd to the White House. We were marshalled through 

 the halls, President Pierce standing in the small chamber 

 adjoining the East Room to receive the guests, around 

 him being members of the Cabinet, with others distin- 

 guished in the civil, military, and naval service, and, 

 among them, especially prominent, Senator Douglas, then 

 at the height of his career. Persons in the .procession 

 were formally presented, receiving a kindly handshake, 

 and then allowed to pass on. My abhorrence of the Presi- 



