Return to Washington.—The different degrees of temperature in the atmosphere at different places seen in the thickness of the ice in the rivers from New York to Washington inclusive.—Long interview with the President. His misfortunes rather than his faults.—His cheerfulness, and his views as to Liberia.—Supernumeraries ought to be set to work and sent off.—Beautiful situation of Washington.—The Congress library, its officers and the agreeable company usually in the library room.—Army of little officers in and about the capitol.—Judge Upshur, personal acquaintance with him, his character and death.—The tragedy on board the Princeton.—Great funeral and a whole city in tears for the loss of so many distinguished citizens.

Having determined to return to Washington city, I wrote to the innkeeper of the Mansion house hotel at Philadelphia, to have my room warm for me at 11 o’clock, P.M. and entering the evening cars at Jersey city in the evening, we were carried across the State of New Jersey, and crossing the Delaware with some difficulty, on account of the ice in the river, I arrived at Philadelphia, and was in a good warm bed, in a warm room, before eleven o’clock at night, at Horter’s Mansion house, corner of 11th and Market streets, Philadelphia.—The ride across the State of New Jersey, in a bright moonlight night, was as agreeable as it could be, we being able to see each town as we passed through it. The cars were well warmed by stoves; we were not too much crowded to be comfortable, and we had agreeable company enough to render our journey pleasant. Lodging at Philadelphia, next morning after breakfast I entered the cars for Baltimore, and arrived at Washington city exactly twenty-five hours after I had left New York. This last day’s ride was perhaps on the second day of February. The different degrees of temperature in the atmosphere during the month of January, was seen in the thickness of the ice in the North, the Delaware, in the Susquehanna and the Potomac rivers. In the North river the ice was fourteen inches in thickness, in the Delaware ten inches, and eight inches in the Susquehanna, but not more than six inches in the Potomac. The city of New York, located on an island that lies high, and is exposed to every breath of air that moves in any direction over the land or the water, is colder than its latitude would seem to indicate. The current in the river and in the Sound, owing to a tide of from seven to eleven feet in height, rising and falling every few hours, prevents any very great inconvenience to ships, either entering into or leaving the harbor in the coldest winter weather.

I was no more fatigued by my journey, than if I had been sitting in my room at the Broadstreet hotel. The passage money between Washington city and New York, is only ten dollars and fifty cents, yet, for handling trunks, for refreshments on the way, and tavern bills, added to car fare, we may safely say that it costs the passenger fifteen dollars between Washington city and New York.

Soon after my return to Washington, I spent an entire evening with the President, from early candle lighting until after nine o’clock. He had invited the Rev. Mr. Gurley, and a gentleman from Memphis, Tennessee, to visit him that evening. These gentlemen tarried an hour or so, when I was left alone with the President. He conversed very freely on the colony of Liberia, and expressed a wish to see it become a nation, independent, but under the protection of the United States and of England. He dwelt on that subject during an hour. He was quite eloquent on the prospect when Virginia would send off her slaves to Liberia, and become a great manufacturing State, and in that way at length assume her old supremacy, standing at the head of the Union in numbers and wealth. The President said that he owned some thirteen slaves, which he bought, to prevent their being carried South. He appeared to be entirely willing to set them free, and let them emigrate to Liberia. To him they had been valueless, and so would remain a burden on his hands. He seemed to think that this Union would last forever, or if it should be divided, the Alleghenies would be the line of separation. In this opinion I heartily coincided with him. He was quite cheerful, and very agreeable in conversation. He appeared to know his position—who his friends were around him, and who were not his friends. At that time I thought he had more friends among his officers than he supposed he had, but subsequently I ascertained the entire correctness of his information on that matter. He has doubtless been very unfortunate. Placed in his high station as unexpectedly to himself as to a whole nation, his first cabinet was not of his selection, and they deserted him in a critical moment. He was compelled instantly to form a new cabinet, which unfortunately for him, Upshur always excepted, began forthwith to help themselves, and their poor, needy, greedy dependants, and they have continued to help themselves ever since they have been in office. Two of these heads of department spent their time in studying how they might gratify either their cupidity or their malice. The indignation of all honest men in the nation was roused into activity against the President, on account of removals from office on several occasions, because they argued that the Chief Magistrate, unless he approved of such flagrant acts of oppression, in removing from office such men as Gen. Van Rensellaer, Governor Lincoln, and a long list of good men, he would at once remove those heads of department who had been guilty of such high-handed injustice. Thus, the whole blame fell on the President, instead of falling on the real authors of such wickedness. The President has been, and is still blamed, for many appointments of very incompetent men, which I understood him to say, he never had interfered with at all. So of the accounting officers, who had in many cases, it is said, done great injustice to individuals, and then had charged all their enormities on the President. The people in every part of the Union had become exasperated at these flagrant acts of oppression and injustice. Claimants, where the case was as clear as the noon-day, were postponed from day to day, for weeks and months; their claims were to be acted on, none could say when. It is a fashion they have here, of putting off the settlement of claims until the applicant has spent here about all that he gets from the government. The supernumerary officers, block up every avenue to the treasury. Congress should either dismiss them altogether, or send them off to clear out our western rivers, or employ them as far off as possible from the seat of the national government. Why they are here at all is a mystery to me, and why Congress permits them to throng their lobbies and the rotundo, is equally surprising to me. West Point academy was once useful, but if the cadets are to accumulate as rapidly as they have of late years, it may lead in the end to an aristocracy in this country. Whether this institution, on the whole, is an useful one, is at best quite doubtful in my mind. Taking a recess, as a legislator would call it, I here say that Washington city and its surrounding country is delightfully situated for the seat of the national government.—The ground rising gradually from the water and extending back in places a mile or more, with the space occupied by water, between, the ground around it on all sides of it, presents every variety of aspect, almost, calculated to render it pleasant as a residence. It has none of the bustle of commerce, none of its noise or crowd. During a session of Congress, persons of both sexes are in the city from all parts of the Union, with whom the stranger can associate, and obtain a great deal of information, topographical, literary, scientific, general or particular. Every person in the whole Union being here represented, one can gain correct information concerning any man of any note in the nation. By going to the library room of Congress, he can there find and read almost any books which he desires to consult. He can there see daily, persons of the most refined taste, polite manners and agreeable conversation. None but such persons are rarely seen in that room. I have always found reading people more placid and more agreeable in their manners than others, and were any whole nation wholly composed of such materials, it would be the happiest and the best nation in the world. Mr. John S. Meehan the librarian and Edward B. Stelle, C.H.W. Meehan and Robert Kearon, his assistants, are among the most polite and agreeable gentlemen in this city. They are always ready to attend to the wishes of all who call on them. Personally acquainted with nearly all who call at their room, they are always ready to introduce a stranger to any gentleman who is in the room. Fatigued as they sometimes are with the constant labor of a long day, yet they never complain of their toil, but cheerfully attend to all the wants of the visiters.—This room is opened very early in the morning, and not closed until a late hour. If any officers of the government deserve all their salaries, and more too, they are the Meehans, father and son, Stelle and Kearon. Their salaries are small ones, and their labors are great and fatiguing all day long, during the whole session of Congress. During the intervals between the sessions, their labors are not so fatiguing, but they are even then constant, unremitting and useful to the visiters, who are always all day long in this library. Having known these gentlemen fourteen years and upwards in their present stations, I take a real pleasure in bearing this testimony in their favor.

How many messengers, assistant messengers, doorkeepers and assistant doorkeepers, clerks and assistant clerks, postmasters and assistant postmasters, paperfolders, pages, &c. &c. there are here, I cannot tell, because I do not know, but their numbers must be very large, and they cost the nation a great deal. All the officers of government in the city must amount to one thousand at least, and their salaries would support probably all the State governments in the Mississippi Valley. I make no complaint of this vast expense, but we must not find fault with the expenses of monarchical government in many of the minor governments in the old world. Take from those governments, in the north of Europe, their standing armies, rendered necessary, perhaps, by their peculiar position, and it is possible that their governments might be cheaper than ours. That we have many useless officers, many members of Congress seem to think, but whether they can be cast off, because they are useless, is doubtful. This army of smaller officers are always on the alert, when retrenchment and reform are talked of by members—these creatures crying out: “penny wise and pound foolish.” They have some influence on Congress, and would be glad to have more. So far as the House of Representatives are concerned, there is a strong disposition to reduce the expenses of the government, but the Senate has not yet acted finally on that subject.

Very soon after my return to Washington, I became personally acquainted with Judge Upshur, Secretary of State. From the first day I saw and conversed with him in his office, until the day of his death, I saw him at least once, often twice a day, and wrote down at night what had been the subjects of our conversation in our interview. I did this at his suggestion, so that he could duly consider the subject matter of our discourse in the day time. He was one of the most agreeable, sensible and truly good men, whom I ever became personally acquainted with. Sometimes he has been called a nullifier, perhaps, but no man in the nation was ever more attached to the Union than he was. We thought precisely alike on that subject—that it is the highest duty of all our citizens to use all the means in our power to promote the interests of all sections of the Union, and of all classes of its people. The natural cements of our confederacy, consisting of mutual interests promoted by mutual acts of kindness and affection for each other, Judge Upshur preferred, as he often told me, to all or even any resorts to the violent restraints of physical force, such as the despot and the tyrant employ. He dwelt with rapture on the future prospects of this nation, when its citizens and its institutions, would cover the whole of North America, like a mantle, and when our ships would float on every sea and visit every island and country in the world. When our steamers would ascend and descend every river of any size that irrigates the countries of both continents. By such means, he thought, christianity would be spread from pole to pole, and all the world become united in the bonds of peace, harmony and brotherly affection. In this way, wars would cease and the despot and the warrior be laid aside as useless. “The nodding plume, he said, dyed in blood, would no more be seen.” Knowing as I did, all his views and all his plans, and the means which he would have used to carry them into execution, I felt the overwhelming calamity of his death the more on these accounts. His plans were all formed, and they were just about to be carried into effect, otherwise he would have instantly gone into private life. Laying my own feelings, as to myself, out of the question, and looking only to the public interest, I felt myself and the country overwhelmed by an awful calamity. Any successor of Judge Upshur would not have the time, such as he had devoted to that object, to form and mature plans of operation. And if he had such plans laid as Upshur had, his successor might not have the necessary means of effecting his object. As a nation, we deserved to suffer, but still we may mourn for our dreadful loss, sustained by his untimely death.

Judge Upshur was a man of good principles and pure morals. He was all in reality and truth, that any old Virginia gentleman was in the days of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, an ornament to human nature itself and of the “Ancient Dominion.” He recalled to my mind the old patriots of Virginia, for whom from my earliest years I had entertained a strong and abiding sense of their worth, their intrinsic value, as men and as citizens of this republic. From three of their Presidents I had received numerous marks of their confidence in me and my relatives. This may be one reason almost without my knowing it why I have always taken such pleasure in doing justice to Virginia’s favorite sons. I shall always take a melancholy pleasure in remembering Judge Upshur, and in associating him in my mind with my old friend Chief Justice Marshall. From the latter gentleman I received a great deal of aid in the way of information, while I was in Washington, many years since, when I was preparing for the press my History of Ohio. An old Virginia gentleman, as he exists in my recollections of Jefferson, Marshall, Monroe and Upshur—the Randolphs, the Masons, the Lees, the Pendletons—and what I hear of Archer, Rives and others is as perfect as human nature can be.

Here I present a very condensed account of the awful calamity on board the Princeton on the 28th day of February, 1844.—The first announcement of the event is derived from the Intelligencer of the 29th of February, and the account of the funeral obsequies is extracted from the Globe of the 4th of March.

In the whole course of our lives it has never fallen to our lot to announce to our readers a more shocking calamity—shocking in all its circumstances and concomitants—than that which occurred on board the United States ship Princeton, yesterday afternoon, whilst under way, in the river Potomac, fourteen or fifteen miles below the city. Yesterday was a day appointed by the courtesy and hospitality of Captain Stockton, Commander of the Princeton, for receiving as visiters to his fine ship (lying off Alexandria) a great number of guests, with their families, liberally and numerously invited to spend the day on board. The day was most favorable, and the company was large and brilliant, of both sexes; not less probably in number than four hundred, among whom were the President of the United States, the Heads of the several Departments, and their families. At a proper hour, after the arrival of the expected guests, the vessel got under way and proceeded down the river, to some distance below Fort Washington. During the passage down, one of the large guns on board (carrying a ball of 225 pounds) was fired more than once, exhibiting the great power and capacity of that formidable weapon of war. The ladies had partaken of a sumptuous repast; the gentlemen had succeeded them at the table, and some of them had left it; the vessel was on her return up the river, opposite to the fort, where Captain Stockton consented to fire another shot from the same gun, around and near which, to observe its effects, many persons had gathered, though by no means so many as on similar discharges in the morning, the ladies who then thronged the deck being on this fatal occasion almost all between decks, and out of reach of harm.

The gun was fired. The explosion was followed, before the smoke cleared away so as to observe its effect, by shrieks of wo which announced a dire calamity. The gun had burst, at a point three or four feet from the breech, and scattered death and desolation around. Mr. Upshur, Secretary of State, Mr. Gilmer, so recently placed at the head of the Navy, Commodore Kennon, one of its gallant officers, Virgil Maxcy, lately returned from a diplomatic residence at the Hague, Mr. Gardner, of New York, (formerly a member of the Senate of that State,) were among the slain. Besides these, seventeen seamen were wounded, several of them badly and probably mortally. Among those stunned by the concussion, we learn not all seriously injured, were Capt. Stockton himself; Col. Benton, of the Senate; Lieut. Hunt, of the Princeton; W.D. Robinson, of Georgetown.—Other persons also were perhaps more or less injured, of whom in the horror and confusion of the moment, no certain account could be obtained. The above are believed to comprise the whole of the persons known to the public who were killed or dangerously or seriously hurt.

The scene upon the deck may more easily be imagined than described. Nor can the imagination picture to itself the half of its horrors. Wives, widowed in an instant by the murderous blast! Daughters smitten with the heart-rending sight of their father’s lifeless corpse! The wailings of agonized females! The piteous grief of the unhurt but heart-stricken spectators! The wounded seamen borne down below! The silent tears and quivering lips of their brave and honest comrades, who tried in vain to subdue or to conceal their feelings! What words can adequately depict a scene like this? On Saturday the last rites were paid to the distinguished men who laid down their lives on the deck of the Princeton. The funeral procession presented the most sad, solemn, affecting scene ever witnessed in this city of the Union. The President’s House was again—as on the demise of General Harrison—made the receptacle of death. Instead of one, five bodies were now laid out in the lately illuminated east room of that fair mansion, which before the melancholy fate which there awaited General Harrison in the first month of the first year of his presidential term, had never known a pall within its precincts. The first month of the last year of the same term found it again turned almost into a charnel house. Like “the Capets monument,” it became “a palace of dim night,” and gathered within its gloom the blackened and bloody remains of a most frightful tragedy—the bodies of five intimate friends of the President, two of them his cabinet associates, all hurried out of existence while he sat unconsciously, with only a plank between them, enjoying a song. What a thin partition in this life separates its scenes of greatest enjoyment and bitterest grief!!

Religious rites were performed over the dead by the Rev. Mr. Hawley and Mr. Butler, of the Episcopal Church, and Mr. Laurie, of the Presbyterian Church, before leaving the President’s House. The bodies were then hearsed, and the procession led off by the military companies, which filled the avenue in front of the President’s house. The military array, composed of horse, infantry, and artillery, made a very imposing appearance; and the train of carriages which followed extended along the avenue more than a mile. A vast multitude, on foot and on horseback, from the neighboring cities and adjoining country, filled the spaces not occupied by the procession. The whole distance between the President’s and the Capitol square, as far as the vision could reach through the darkness of the day and the dust, seemed to be a living current, in slow movement to the wailing and mournful music of the band, which, with the sound of distant cannon and solemn-pealing bells, alone broke the silence. The immense crowd was perfectly mute in its march. The dread quiet that reigned over all; the almost twilight darkness that dimmed the whole day; the deep mists that shadowed the surrounding hills and horizon from sight; the cloud of dust that covered the long and gloomy procession; the sweeping trains of crape that blackened the closed windows and doors of the dwellings on the way,—gave, altogether, the most saddened and impressive aspect of wo ever worn by this city. It was rendered the more deeply affecting by the contrast of but a few days before, when the warmth of a vernal sun had shone out, giving light and gayety to our streets, opening the buds upon the trees and bringing out the tender green upon the grounds whereon the snow had so recently lain.

The mournful ceremonials had just been concluded, when the city was alarmed with the apprehension of another fatal accident to the Chief Magistrate himself. As he returned in his carriage of state from the place of interment, (the Congress burying ground, about three miles from the President’s House,) his horses took fright, and ran with fury along the great thoroughfare, filled with people and carriages. There was no arresting their wild career; the reins were broken in the attempt to restrain them, and all that could be done was to give room to their headlong flight. As they approached the turn in the end of the avenue, obstructed by the President’s square, they got scared at something on one side of the street, and shied off in their course to the curb-stone on the other side, which gave the advantage to an intrepid colored man on the side walk to seize them by the short reins and stop them. A little beyond, in the direction they were going, lay masses of the large stone rejected from the new treasury building, near the precipitous bank to the south of the President’s wall. Had not the career of the horses been arrested at the moment that it was, the next would have wrecked the carriage on these rocks, or precipitated it over the bank. The President was happy to escape from his state equipage, over which all guidance and control was lost, and find himself afoot, by the side of his humble deliverer.