 |
| When war had lost its Glamour—provost-marshal's office in Alexandria, 1863 The novelty had departed from ‘the pomp and pageantry of war’ by the fall of 1863. The Army of the Potomac had lost its thousands on the Peninsula, at Cedar Mountain, at Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. The soldiers were sated with war; they had forgotten a host of things taught to them as essential in McClellan's training camps that first winter around Washington. The paraphernalia of war had become familiar, and they yearned for the now unfamiliar paraphernalia of peace. This photograph shows the provost-marshal's office in Alexandria, Virginia, in the fall of 1863. The provost-marshal's men had long since learned to perform their duties with all the languid dignity of a city policeman. Attached to the flag-pole is a sign which heralds the fact that Dick Parker's Music Hall is open every night. Two years before the soldiers might have disdained to seek such entertainment in the face of impending battles. Now war was commonplace, and the ‘gentle arts of peace’ seemed strange and new. |
This text is part of:
[245]
Review of Reviews. New York. 1912.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.