XX
PRESIDENT LINCOLN, accompanied by Secretaries Seward and Welles, reviewed the brigade this forenoon. Friday afternoon we were reviewed by Gen. McClellan, who is next in command to Gen. Scott. We expect to stay here several weeks—perhaps till the first of October. We are so very pleasantly situated that we would not object to lying around here for a few weeks. If the rebels should be bold enough to attack Washington there will be lots of music. The city is being fortified against any such emergency. Our brigade is working on a fort near here that would prove a hard nut to crack. Three of our regiments were at Bull Run. The First Massachusetts was in the Thursday fight at Blackburn’s Ford, and the Eleventh Massachusetts was in the Sunday fight.
There was a most laughable scene here today. Colonel Fiske’s horse ran away with him and bolted smack into [Lieut.] Joe Hubbard’s tent. Down went tent, horse and rider all in one grand mix-up. And while they were trying to save something from the wreck out of the ruins crawled the worst-scared man ever seen in these parts since Bull Run. He was reading a newspaper, all unsuspecting, when the heavens fell.
A day or two ago I read a letter from a daughter of old John Brown. It was written to a brother-in-law of hers in my company—Willard P. Thompson—whose brother, her husband, was one of John Brown’s men killed at Harper’s Ferry two or three years ago. It was a gem of patriotic sentiment, and with a fine womanly instinct she expressed her sorrow that Avis, who was her father’s jailer, was killed at Bull Run—he was so very kind to the old prisoner.