1861_ The Civil War Awakening - Adam Goodheart [209]
*George Scott went on a similar mission. He accompanied Colonel Duryee to Washington in July, saying that he “was going to plead with Pres. Lincoln for his liberties.” It is unclear if he was given a hearing. (Lewis C. Lockwood to “Dear Brethren,” April 17, 1862, AMA Papers, Fisk University.)
*Exact estimates of the numbers of contrabands are rare. As of early January 1863, a Northern newspaper estimated that 120,000 fugitives had been received into the Union lines. (Utica Morning Herald, Jan. 6, 1863.) However, the means of arriving at this figure are unclear, and it does not account for the large numbers of fugitives who remained outside the Union encampments or continued north to the free states. Certainly by that point there were a number of Union bases (including Port Royal, South Carolina, and Fortress Monroe) that each had at least 5,000 or 10,000 contrabands.
CHAPTER NINE
Independence Day
And is this the ground Washington trod?
—WALT WHITMAN,
“The Centenarian’s Story” (1861)
Washington, July 1861
ONE SUNDAY NIGHT in early summer, James Ferguson, assistant astronomer of the United States Naval Observatory, was making a routine survey of the skies above Washington when he noticed an unusual ray of light pulsating just above the northern horizon. As the night was somewhat overcast, he was unable to determine the exact nature of this phenomenon, and decided that it was probably just a stray beam of the aurora borealis.1
The following evening, the first night of July, a rainstorm swept the capital. Afterward, when Ferguson returned to the Observatory dome, he saw the same pale streak flickering in a slightly different place, once again half hidden amid drifting banks of heavy cloud. At last, just past midnight, the sky cleared and the mysterious object swam free into his view. Indeed, it soon glowed so bright that Ferguson pushed the telescope aside and simply stared in astonishment at the ball of luminescence that swelled and became more brilliant by the minute, soon outshining every star and planet. A pale brushstroke of light trailed behind, streaming higher and higher above the horizon, waxing like the flame of a lamp newly lit.
Millions of people across the country saw the comet—indeed, half the world did. By the next night, its head looked as large as a three-quarters moon, and the tail traversed more than half the sky, seeming to one observer as if it were made of “infinitesimal specks of fire” that swayed from side to side. It cast a faint shadow, and reflected on the surface of the sea. Some even claimed they could see it by day.
Scientists were as dazzled as the general public. They were accustomed to watching comets approach earth gradually, from a great distance; none had imagined that such a spectacular celestial body could loom up so unexpectedly. One overstimulated astronomer in Pittsburgh, confessing that the first glimpse made his hair “fairly [stand] up with wonder and excitement,” announced to the press: “I think by the cut of her jib she will probably be remembered, and also recorded, as one of the most extraordinary craft that has floated into our horizon in hundreds of years.”
At Fortress Monroe, Edward Pierce observed the comet as it burst into full splendor just past dusk on July 2, its tail sweeping across the zenith of the sky like a second Milky Way. Thomas Starr King saw it in San Francisco and was reminded of the fiery dragon in the Book of Revelation. In Manhattan on the night of the 3rd, according to the New York Herald, one enterprising citizen set up a large telescope at the corner of Broadway and Warren Street, the usually jaded city lining up to pay for a quick peep. Perhaps inevitably, the Herald, not fully satisfied with the news value of a mere cosmic event, dubbed the celestial apparition the “War Comet of 1861.”
On the following night, the Fourth of July, the New York Fire Zouaves watched it from their camp in Alexandria. “While a grand