328 THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF 



British troops occupied the city for a few hours in August, 1814, 

 burned the White House, set fire to the Capitol, and retired. 

 But the civil war, 1861-1865, had a very different effect and 

 made a lasting impress. Washington for four years was one. 

 great military camp and hospital. A cordon of earthworks 

 many miles in extent surrounded the city. Bluecoats were 

 everywhere, and the passing of endless trains of bronzed veter- 

 ans, of sick and wounded, of artillery, of supplies, was too com- 

 mon a sight to attract either notice or comment. Into this camp 

 there came by'railroad one evening Mrs Julia Ward Howe. 

 Long abominating slavery, she saw in all this stern turmoil the 

 fruition of the abolitionists' hope, and that out of this war was 

 to emerge freedom for black and white alike. From the car 

 windows could be seen the camp-fires stretching miles away. 

 After making a round of visits to various camps, the following 

 day she returned to her hotel, her heart all on fire, and there 

 wrote that immortal Battle Hymn of the Republic, beginning — 



Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, 



He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. 



Recalling the circumstances under which the lines were penned, 

 we can the better understand such a line as this : 



I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps. 



But the war ended at last. During it even Pennsylvania 

 avenue, a street now as widely and as favorably known as any 

 in the world, was at times a veritable mud-hole, wherein artil- 

 lery and wagon trains sometimes stalled. The "White lot" 

 and the "Monument grounds " ceased to be used for slaughtering 

 cattle for the army; the great mule-drawn wagons no longer 

 went daily to the Capitol for the tons of bread baked in the little 

 rooms under its west steps; the churches no longer housed the 

 war-mangled and disease-stricken, and the war scars about the 

 city began quickly to heal. The unsightliness of the half-fin- 

 ished dome of the Capitol faded with its completion. The tract 

 of neglected undergrowth and wild woods, with its surrounding 

 dilapidated picket fence, was transformed into the park which 

 now faces the east front of the Capitol. The Washington mon- 

 ument, which all during and for years after the war stood as an 

 unsightly stump surmounted by wooden scaffolding, grew to a 

 stately shaft, a thing of beauty, and the debris and litter which 

 for twenty years or more had cumbered the ground at its base 



