"Potomac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forefathers suffered for want of roads by which they could convey their armies and their supplies to the frontiers. Therefore they set out to remedy that condition, and four years after the peace they had the Cumberland Road completed from the upper Potomac to the Ohio River. Six years later the Erie Canal was opened to Lake Erie. The people had suffered for want of a national bank during the war: in 1816 Congress created one. Their trade had been disturbed for over twenty years: in 1816 they passed a tariff, ...
— The Mentor: The War of 1812 - Volume 4, Number 3, Serial Number 103; 15 March, 1916. • Albert Bushnell Hart
... yet. He is spending Saturday and Sunday out at Dr. Rixey's. Ted plays tennis with Matt. Hale and me and Mr. Cooley. We tied Dan Moore. You could beat him. Yesterday I took an afternoon off and we all went for a scramble and climb down the other side of the Potomac from Chain Bridge home. It was great fun. To-morrow (Sunday) we shall have lunch early and spend the afternoon in a drive of the entire family, including Ethel, but not including Archie and Quentin, out to Burnt Mills and back. When I say we all scrambled ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... to the Federal camps on the Potomac in 1861, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe returned to her lodgings in Washington, fatigued, as she says, by her "long, cold drive," and slept soundly. Awakening at early daybreak, she began "to twine the long ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... the blush upon thy cheek, Maryland! For thou wast ever bravely meek, Maryland! But lo! there surges forth a shriek, From hill to hill, from creek to creek, Potomac calls to Chesapeake, ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... and how to rig them, and the names of the ropes and sails and spars. She told me, in return, a good deal about herself and her family, and her likes and dislikes and occupations. Her father had property, I found, between the Chesapeake and Potomac rivers in Virginia, where she had generally resided. Since his death she had remained chiefly with her aunt, Mrs Tarleton, though she hoped to return in a short time, if the state of the country would allow ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... facility with which they have compelled her to pay millions for a drug alike pernicious to character and health, or the report of the treaty and tribute dictated from the walls of Pekin,—or could he have foreseen the progress of Lord Cochrane's frigates up the Potomac, regardless of his gunboats,—could he have foreshadowed the conflagration of the Capitol and the exit of the Cabinet,—he would perhaps have attached more importance to a navy and found less to admire in the policy of China, and doubtless his immediate successor would not have aimed a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... than 10 years old. I think a tree like that is very useful planted by a house because of its rapid growth. The foliage is very lovely. I have measured some of the leaves and some are a yard long. Another tree I have growing near the house is a Potomac English walnut. It is a very vigorous tree, has a dense shade and a very good grower. A very lovely tree to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... engaged to make a preliminary survey; but the directors, not wholly satisfied with his report, afterwards secured the services of Samuel Weston, an eminent English engineer, then employed in Pennsylvania on the Potomac canals. His report, made Aug. 2, 1794, was favorable; and it is interesting to compare his figures with those of Mr. Thompson. As calculated by Thompson, the ascent from Medford bridge to the Concord river, at Billerica, was found to be 68-1/2 ft.; the actual difference in level, as found by Weston, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... prophesied its commercial importance in the present century. Soon after reaching his home at Mount Vernon, he turned his attention to the improvement of intercourse with the west through the valley of the Potomac. The east and west, he said, must be cemented together by interests in common; otherwise they will break asunder. Without commercial intercourse they will cease to understand each other, and will ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... friends, and more would come the next day. Such is the mysterious spiritual telegraph which runs through the slave population. Proclaim an edict of emancipation in the hearing of a single slave on the Potomac, and in a few days it will be known by his brethren on the Gulf. So, on the night of the Big Bethel affair, a squad of negroes, meeting our soldiers, inquired anxiously the way ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac and then out into Virginia and on to the heavens themselves, and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States. Not that I would intimate that all of the United States lies south of Washington, but there is a serious thing ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... has allowed this great work to be done so rapidly and fortunately has been, first, the popular tenure of the soil, and, secondly, the character of the agricultural class. At no time have the cultivators of the soil north of the Potomac and Ohio constituted a peasantry in the ordinary sense of that term. They have been the same kind of men, out of precisely the same homes, generally with the same early training, as those who filled the learned professions or who were ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Potomac, in the shadow of the mountains, among the hundreds of small islands which dot the river in that picturesque region, is one which has the reputation of being haunted. It is but a few miles above ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... of his proved more or less valid. Just now, in the matter of Margaret Severence, this universal overlordship filled him with rage, the more furious that he realized he could no more shake Josh's conviction than he could make the Washington monument topple over into the Potomac by saying, "Be thou removed." He might explain all the obvious reasons why Margaret would never deign to condescend to him; Josh would dismiss them with a laugh ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... witnessed the patriotic gallantry of these despised 'niggers;' and in the first Virginia campaign of Lieutenant-General Grant, negroes have borne an honorable part. There is a division of them attached to the old ninth corps, under Burnside, in the present organization of the Army of the Potomac. While that noble army was fighting the battles of the Wilderness, this division was holding the fords of the Rapid Ann. When Grant swung his base away from the river, after the disaster to his right wing, and moved upon Lee's flank, the ninth ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... January 19, 1807. Seventy-five years had intervened between those events but, except in the matter of population, Westmoreland County remained much the same as it had been during Washington's youth. Indians, it is true, no longer lurked in he surrounding forests or paddled the broad Potomac in their frail canoes, but the life had much of the same freedom and charm which had endeared it to Washington. All the streams and woods and haunts which he had known and loved were known and ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... your letter of February the 25th, I communicated the plan for clearing the Potomac, with the act of Assembly, and an explanation of its probable advantages, to Mr. Grand, whose acquaintance and connection with the monied men here, enabled him best to try its success. He has done so; but ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to the lesser sort of Tammany office-holders and to the vermin who monopolize the public functions in such cities as Boston and Philadelphia. The gentry, with few exceptions, have been forced out of the public service everywhere south of the Potomac, if not out of politics. The Democratic victory in 1912 flooded all the governmental posts at Washington with Southerners, and they remain in power to this day, and some of them are among the chief officers of the nation. But in the whole ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... does he manage with those little circular wings to compass degrees and zones, and arrive always in the nick of time? Last August I saw him in the remotest wilds of the Adirondacks, impatient and inquisitive as usual; a few weeks later, on the Potomac, I was greeted by the same hardy little busybody. Does he travel by easy stages from bush to bush and from wood to wood? or has that compact little body force and courage to brave the night and the upper air, and so ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... back inland where it belonged. He lay under a live-oak on the parade ground and once more received the joy of life into his heart. When he was well enough to limp about, they gave him leave to go home; and he went down into a ship, and sailed away up the laughing Chesapeake, and up the broad Potomac to Washington. There he rested during one night, and in the morning took train for New York. The train was full of sick and wounded going home, and there was a great cheerfulness upon them all. Men joined ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... close to Lonnie. It did gather in the hidden, dead, still twitching, completely uncommunicative carcasses of the five men who actually relieved the vault of the Citizen's Bank of Berlin of its clutch of millions. It even identified the body of the rocopilot found floating in the Potomac a few days later as being one of the group, and the killer. It did not locate the arsonized remnants of the plane, though, nor the currency; and only achieved the casting of a slight, or subsidiary, third-hand aspersion in the direction of ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... time hostilities along the river gradually ceased. The Boxer for nearly a year ran from one end of her beat to the other without encountering a single armed rebel. Then came the news of the glorious success of the Army of the Potomac, followed by the intelligence of a general surrender of the rebel forces. The Boxer was dressed with flags, salutes fired, and officers and crew looked forward with impatience to the time when they would be permitted to return home. At length came the long ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... was a lovely place. Like Harper's Ferry, that I spoke of in the preceding chapter, it is situated on Camp Hill in a lovely place, between the Potomac River on one side and the Shenandoah River on the other, and it has two of the most beautiful bridges I ever saw. When you see the trains coming and going ...
— A Slave Girl's Story - Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. • Kate Drumgoold
... estimate of the army and of the futility of an attack from McClellan was justified when, after the 26th of June, the Army of the Potomac, almost in sight of the spires of Richmond, was forced to reel back, in the deadly clinch of a seven days' combat, to the James River. The Confederate army changed its position from one of retreat to a brilliant and aggressive ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... been in the city of Washington within twelve years. In the past his furloughs had been spent at his brother's country home in Larchmont, out of New York City. Thus, when he left the train at the Baltimore and Potomac station, he hadn't the slightest idea where Scott Circle was. He looked around in vain for the smart cab of the northern metropolis. All he saw was a line of omnibuses and a few ramshackle vehicles that twenty years back might very well have passed for victorias. A grizzled old negro, ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... and bullet-bag, and furnished with provisions for several days. With these we started for San Antonio de Bexar, a march of two hundred and fifty miles, through trackless prairies intersected with rivers and streams, which, although not quite so big as the Mississippi or Potomac, were yet deep and wide enough to have offered serious impediment to regular armies. But to Texian farmers and backwoodsmen, they were trifling obstacles. Those we could not wade through we swam over; and in due time, and without any incident ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... Where proud Potomac dashes Along its northern strand, Where Rappahannock lashes Virginia's sparkling sand; Where Eutaw, famed in story, Flows swift to Santee's stream, There, there in grief and gory, The pining ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... whose name is as inseparable from the marvellous canyon-river as that of De Soto from the Mississippi, or Hendrik Hudson from the placid stream which took from him its title, started on that final journey whence there is no returning. A distinguished cortege bore the remains across the Potomac, laying them in a soldier's grave in the National Cemetery at Arlington. Thus the brave sleeps with the brave on the banks of the river of roses, a stream in great contrast to that other river far in the West where only might be found a tomb more appropriate within sound of the ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... literary centers that exerted a notable influence. The first was Richmond, the home of Poe during his earlier years, and of the Southern Literary Messenger, in its day the most influential magazine south of the Potomac. It was founded, as set forth in its first issue, in 1834, to encourage literature in Virginia and the other states of the South; and during its career of twenty-eight years it stimulated literary activity in a remarkable degree. ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... their regiment with nothing to tell. But it was cheerful about the fires. Optimism reigned once more in the Army of Virginia. McClellan had sent word to Pope that he would have plenty of soldiers to face the attack that now seemed to be threatened by the South. Brigades from the Army of the Potomac would make the Army ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Grant, Major-General Thomas H. Neill, Colonel James B. McKean, Colonel W. B. French, Chaplain Norman Fox, and Mr. Henry M. Myers. I am also indebted to the friends of Samuel S. Craig for the use of his diary, extending from the early history of the Army of the Potomac, to the death of the talented young soldier in ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... his lordly flood Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade Along his frowning Palisade; Looked down the Appalachian peak On Juniata's silver streak; Have seen along his valley gleam The Mohawk's softly winding stream; The level light of sunset shine Through broad Potomac's hem of pine; And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna; Yet wheresoe'er his step might be, Thy wandering child looked back to thee! Heard in his dreams thy river's sound Of murmuring on its pebbly bound, The unforgotten swell and roar Of waves on thy ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... hours crept by, and day by day They watched the Potomac Army at bay. Defeat and defeat! It was here, just here, In the very height of ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... heroism is the Potomac River, and on the far shore the sloping hills of Arlington National Cemetery with its row on row of simple white markers bearing crosses or Stars of David. They add up to only a tiny fraction of the price that has ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... when she ceased the hymns of her fervid Methodism, turned always to that far-off, gentle land where life had been so free from anxiety or care. Of Dixie, of the Potomac, of old Kentucky, of the "Mississip'," of the land of Tennessee—a score of songs of exile would flow unconscious from her lips, until at last, bethinking to herself, she would fall to weeping, covering her face ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... country; has taken us down the Pepacton, the stream of his boyhood; we have traversed with him the "Heart of the Southern Catskills," and the valleys of the Neversink and the Beaverkill; we have sat upon the banks of the Potomac, and sailed down the Saguenay; we have had a glimpse of the Blue Grass region, and "A Taste of Maine Birch" (true, Thoreau gave us this, also, and other "Excursions" as well); we have walked with him the lanes of "Mellow England"; journeyed "In the ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... herself now on one of the low couches, her hands clasped across its arm, her eyes looking far away out of the little window, beyond which could be seen the hills across the wide Potomac. ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... the Pocahontas was lying off the Washington Navy-Yard, in the eastern branch of the Potomac, on duty connected with the patrol of the river; the Virginia bank of which was occupied by the Confederates, who were then erecting batteries to dispute the passage of vessels. After one excursion down-stream in ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the young Senator delayed not to speak and act; nor did he wait for an amendment to the Constitution. His first speech in the Senate was in favor of building a bridge over the Potomac; one of his first acts, to propose an appropriation of lands for a canal round the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville; and soon he brought forward a resolution directing the Secretary of the Treasury to report a system of roads and canals for the consideration of Congress. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... original thirteen colonies, and even one in Kentucky, much like the Jamestowns and Charlestowns and Williamsburgs named for the sovereign of the time, but this George Town of which I write was in Maryland on the Potomac River, and because it was situated at the head of tidewater of that great river, it became important on account of the great amount of tobacco grown in that area and brought to this point to be ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... of 1861 until the spring of 1862 we spent the time in company and regimental drill, and in picketing the shore of the Potomac river day and night, lest the enemy should effect a landing and take us unaware. During that time no shots were exchanged with the enemy, because no landing was attempted. The only fighting that we saw was at Dumfries where there was a Confederate fort, to which we marched to act as a support ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... Maryland settlement, as they are recounted in the pages of Bozman, Chalmers, and Grahame, and found there some inducements to persuade me to make an exploration of the whereabouts of the old city which was planted near the Potomac by our first pilgrims. Through the kindness of a much valued friend, whose acquirements and taste—both highly cultivated—rendered him a most effective auxiliary in my enterprise, I was supplied with an opportunity to spend a week under the hospitable roof of Mr. Carberry, the worthy ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... Livy or Gibbon. Lady Russell's letters tell us of the Civil War in England,—Saint Mark's, at Venice, of Byzantine taste and Oriental commerce,—the Escurial and the Alhambra, Versailles, a castle on the Rhine, and a "modest mansion on the banks of the Potomac," of their respective eras and their characteristics, social, political, religious,—more than the most elaborate register, muster-roll, or judicial calendar. For around and within these memorials lingers the life of Humanity; they speak to the eye as well as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... long years come and go, And the Past, The sorrowful splendid Past, With its glory and its woe, Seems never to have been. Seems never to have been! O somber days and grand, How ye crowd back once more, Seeing our heroes graves are green By the Potomac, and the Cumberland And in the valley ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... government was removed to Philadelphia, where it remained for ten years, after which the United States took advantage of the Homestead Act and located on a tract of land ten miles square, known as the District of Columbia. In 1846 that part of the District lying on the Virginia side of the Potomac was ceded back ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... Oswego, N.Y. to their esteemed fellow citizen Genl. John Porter Hatch as a testimonial of their appreciation of the gallantry and heroism displayed by him in the service of his country especially on the battle fields of Mexico and in the Army of the Potomac Jany 1863. ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... newspaper, but had not heart to read all the bloody details. Good God! What will the end be? Perhaps we are too despondent here; but I must think you are too hopeful on your side of the water. I never believed the "canards" of the army of the Potomac having capitulated. My good dear wife and self are come to wish for peace at any price. Good night, my good friend. I will scribble ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... country out of its difficulties. Mr. Swigg's patriotism was of the substantial kind—he derived the chief benefit from it. He bethought himself of taking out a contract for supplying the Army of the Potomac with cattle and other necessaries. He put his scheme into execution, and, like every thing he attempted, it was successful. The army was fed, and towards the close of the year 1864 Mr. Swigg found himself worth three ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... few years ago that the veracious chronicler of these pages moved with a wondering crowd of sightseers in the gardens of the White House. The war cloud had long since lifted and vanished; the Potomac flowed peacefully by and on to where once lay the broad plantation of a great Confederate leader—now a national cemetery that had gathered the soldier dead of both sections side by side in equal rest and honor—and ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... him. But he realized that it was a long, long way to Florida from Washington, D. C. It was even a long way—five miles at least—from Jerry's house to Memorial Bridge, over which he would cross the Potomac into the ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... other places, perhaps," he said, "but here you do. The dampness comes up from the Potomac at nightfall, and it's just as well to be careful. It's Mrs. Harrison's dictum," he added smiling. "Halford, send up for one of my light ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... considered it may well be doubted if there was ever a division in the Union army commanded by abler men than Hancock, Stevens, Brooks and Baldy Smith. During the formative period of the Army of the Potomac, when all were drilling, all studying tactics, all teaching guard duty and all striving hard to establish a satisfactory state of military discipline, Smith varied this irksome work by an occasional review, or by the still more exciting exercise of a reconnaissance in force, thus adding ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... years ago, on the banks of the Potomac, in the county of Westmoreland, on a spot marked now only by a memorial stone, of the blood of the people whom I have faintly described, fourth in descent from the Colonel John Washington whom I have named, ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington. She was in excellent health, but she said that the climate would do her good. In New York she had troops of friends, but she suddenly became eager to see again the very small number of those who lived on the Potomac. It was only to her closest intimates that she honestly acknowledged herself to be tortured by ennui. Since her husband's death, five years before, she had lost her taste for New York society; she had felt no interest in the price of stocks, and very ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... review, Wednesday, May 23, was given to the Army of the Potomac, of which General Meade had remained the commander since the victory at Gettysburg, but whose operations during the closing year of the struggle had been under the personal direction of General ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... miles. Into its basin a great many smooth and placid rivers discharge their contents. Perhaps no bay of the world has such diversified scenery. Among the rivers which enter the bay from the west, four—the Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James—are particularly large and imposing. They divide what is called tide-water Virginia into long and narrow peninsulas, which are themselves furrowed by deep creeks making numerous necks or minor peninsulas of land. Up these rivers and ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... Robert T. Lincoln; and for Lincoln and Tad, which is from the famous photograph by Brady; to The Macmillan Company of New York for the portrait of Mrs. Lincoln and also for The Review of the Army of the Potomac, both of which were originally reproduced in Ida M. Tarbell's Life of Abraham Lincoln. For the rare and interesting portrait entitled The Last Phase of Lincoln acknowledgment is made to Robert Bruce, Esquire, Clinton, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... hardly be imagined. It was scattered over an ill-paved and half-filled oblong extending east and west from the Capitol to the White House, and north and south from the line of the Maryland hills to the Potomac River. One does not wonder that the early Britishers, led by Tom Moore, made game of it, for it was ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... and came to the conclusion that Harriet had spoken the truth. He was gayer than of old, but his health was better and he was in cheerful company, not living his days and nights in his lonely damp old house on the Potomac River. He appeared to enjoy talking to Harriet, but there was nothing lover-like in his attitude, and he was almost her guardian. True, he was occasionally moody and absent, but a man must retain a few of his old spots; and if ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... question was of no emotional consequence; what he wanted was the assumption of the state debts because they would further nationalize the proposed union. So he gladly traded the site of the capitol for two necessary votes from men who represented the Potomac district. To Hamilton the Union was a symbol that represented all his interests and his whole experience; to White and Lee from the Potomac, the symbol of their province was the highest political entity they served, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... eight mails a year from Philadelphia to the Potomac River, and even then the post-rider need not start till he had received enough letters to pay the expenses of the trip. It was not till postal affairs were placed in the capable and responsible hands ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Baltimore was more determined than ever to plant a colony, and in 1632 obtained his grant of a piece of Virginia. The tract lay between the Potomac River and the fortieth degree of north latitude, and extended from the Atlantic Ocean to a north and south line through the source of the Potomac.[1] It was called Maryland in honor of the Queen, ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... this war into which we have been driven is, in fact, a war against Slavery. But emancipation is not and could not be the object of the war. It will be time enough to consider the question as one of military necessity when our armies advance. To proclaim freedom from the banks of the Potomac to an unarmed, subject, and dispirited race, when the whole white population is in arms, would be as futile as impolitic. Till we can equip our own army, it is idle to talk of arming the slaves; and to incite them to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... time of Robert Fulton, at any rate, dates the commercial usage of the steamboat. Others had done the pioneering—Fitch on the Delaware, James Rumsey on the Potomac, William Longstreet on the Savannah, Elijah Ormsley on the waters of Rhode Island, while Samuel Morey had actually traveled by steamboat from New Haven to New York. Fulton's craft was not materially better than any of these, but it happened to ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the year 1788 a Virginia gentleman sat before his desk in his mansion beside the Potomac writing a letter. He was a man of fifty-six, evidently tall and of strong figure, but with shoulders a trifle stooped, enormously large hands and feet, sparse grayish-chestnut hair, a countenance somewhat marred by lines of care and marks of smallpox, withal benevolent and honest-looking—the kind ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... against him. As it had been with Gage in Boston and with Howe in Philadelphia, so was it now with Clinton in New York. From Danbury in Connecticut to Elizabeth in New Jersey, a thin line watched the pent-up enemy, who to seaward was guarded by a great fleet. North of the Potomac he held New York alone, but on the frontier a savage contest raged, and in the South the war everywhere went ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... their whale and cod fisheries, their corn-harvests, and their timber trade. The distinction indeed between the northern and southern colonies was more than an industrial one. While New England absorbed half a million of whites, and the middle colonies from the Hudson to the Potomac contained almost as many, there were less than 300,000 whites in those to the south of the Potomac. These on the other hand contained 130,000 negroes, and the central States 70,000, while but 11,000 were found in the States of New England. In the Southern States this ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... rather an ill-judged wasting of the public energy," was to the action of certain meetings in South Carolina where it was resolved to wear only their own manufactures, and abstain wholly from those made north of the Potomac. The supporters of nullification defended themselves on constitutional grounds and on the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798. Congress revised the tariff in May, 1832, modifying some of the duties imposed by ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... a great number of educated and trained soldiers, but the bulk of them were still in the army and were retained, generally with their old commands and rank, until the war had lasted many months. In the Army of the Potomac there was what was known as the "regular brigade," in which, from the commanding officer down to the youngest second lieutenant, every one was educated to his profession. So, too, with many of the batteries; all the officers, generally ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... pretentious. Thoroughly cozy, with many artistic touches within, it snuggled on the heights near Arlington, the close neighbor to many of the Nation's best memories, looking out on a noble sweep of the fine, old Potomac, with glimpses through the trees of the Nation's Capitol, glimpses revealing the best of its beauties. It was a home from which emanated an atmosphere of peace and repose which one seemed to feel even as one approached. It was a home pervaded with ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... but them times, vaudeville was their one best bet. And next to emotional actrines who could emosh twicet daily for twenty minutes on a stretch, without giving way anywhere, a good trained-animal turn had the call. It might be a troupe of educated Potomac shad or an educated ape or a city-broke Gila monster or a talking horse or what not. In our case ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... "there is no use delaying here. The commandant at the fort informed me that about the quickest way to get to Washington now is to take a boat up the Potomac." ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... ago a sturdy, hard-working farmer lived near the southern bank of the Potomac River, in what was then the English colony of Virginia. On the 22d day of February, 1732, a son was born in the modest farm-house, who afterward came to be the most famous, and one of the noblest, of Americans. His name was George Washington. He grew up ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of cruelty, injustice, and wrong, preferred by his enemies,—traits that have inexpressibly endeared their possessor to every officer and soldier in his late army. Said an officer, but just returned from New Orleans, to me a few days since,—"I have heard of the infatuation of the Army of the Potomac to its earlier leader, but I do not believe their devotion is near so deep and earnest as that of the faithful men who followed General Butler from New England and the Northwest, through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... name is perpetuated in that of Ogle county, Illinois. The Ogles were of old English stock, some of whom at least were found on the side of Cromwell and the Commonwealth. Catherine's family at one time lived on the South Branch of the Potomac, although at the time of her marriage her home was near Wheeling. Captain Ogle's commission, signed by Gov. Patrick Henry, is now a valued possession of one of Mrs. Lemen's descendants. James and Catherine Lemen were well ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... about two miles up," replied a passing countryman, who had led his horse into the corn field. "Whoopee! he was going at a God-a'mighty pace, I tell you. If he keeps that up he'll be over the Potomac ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... Virginia, although Maryland, Georgia, and New Hampshire also opposed it, and the Middle States were divided. Jefferson was able to get enough Southern votes to carry assumption in return for enough votes from Hamilton's adherents to carry the Potomac site. An agreement was reached at a dinner given by Jefferson to which he invited Hamilton and Madison. According to this arrangement, the capital was to remain in Philadelphia for ten years and after that to be on ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... no less than half a million of soldiers enlisted in the army of the Union. It seemed as if we were now ready to cope with rebellion in all its extent and strength. The hope of an approaching and decisive triumph animated the hearts of the loyal. McClellan now led the Army of the Potomac against Richmond, approaching it from the east. Then followed the battle of Fair Oaks, and the Seven Days' battles, of which that at Malvern Hill was the most hotly contested. The Confederates were beaten, with terrible loss on both sides. Cedar Mountain and the second Bull Run ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... variety; but, in truth, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Morris are arranging the matter. This is without doubt. There is to be some sort of compromise with the Southern senators, who are promised the capital on the Potomac, finally, if they no longer oppose the assumption of the State debts. I hear that Mr. Jefferson has been brought to agree to this understanding. And Mr. Morris doubtless thinks, if the government offices are once opened in Philadelphia, ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... heaven of cloud and mist and chill, and sprung the blue sky as the triumphal arch for the returning warriors to pass under. From Arlington Heights the spring foliage shook out its welcome, as the hosts came over the hills, and the sparkling waters of the Potomac tossed their gold to the feet of the battalions as they came to the Long Bridge and in almost interminable line passed over. The Capitol never seemed so majestic as that morning: snowy white, looking down upon the tides of men that came surging down, billow after billow. Passing in silence, yet ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... the arrival of Sherman's army at Washington City, General Grant issued orders for the review of the Grand Army of the Potomac to take place on the 23rd, and that known as Sherman's army to take place on the 24th. Thousands of people flocked from all parts of the country to witness the grand pageant. The most ample preparations had been made for the ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... Washington died of a heavy cold brought on by swimming the Potomac in the heart of winter to visit a yellow girl on ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... present-day Virginia was occupied by Indians of three linguistic stocks: Algonquin, Siouan, and Iroquoian. Generally speaking, the Algonquins which included the Powhatan Confederacy inhabited the Tidewater, reaching from the Potomac to the James River and extending to the Eastern Shore. The Siouan tribes, including the Monacans and the Manahoacs, occupied the Piedmont; while the Iroquoian group, containing the independent Nottoways and Meherrins, partially surrounded the ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... was great-grandson to John Washington, a gentleman of respectable family, who had emigrated from England about the middle of the preceding century, and had settled at Potomac, in Westmoreland county, in the colony of Virginia. At this place the general was born, and after receiving a plain education, he learned something of the business of land-surveying, and was in the eighteenth year of his age appointed surveyor of the western part of the territory ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... "you should know de heestory of your country. Up to Vest Point, de Hudson vas full of fights. All along shore, too. I vas on de Mississippi, and it is fights all de vay down to his mout'. So mit some oder American rifers, but de vorst of all is the Potomac, by Vashington. Eet ees not so fine as de Hudson, but eet is battle-grounds all along shore. I vas on de Danube, and eet ees vorse for fights dan de Potomac. I see so many oder rifers, all ofer, eferyvere, but de fighting rifer ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... sight lay before their eyes a short time later, when Gerald stopped the machine half way up the side of one of the mountains, and they gazed out over the valley, through which a silvery stream of water flowed merrily toward the Potomac. Then, their eyes thoroughly satiated, they began to look for a suitable place in which to ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... For its rough cultivation, each estate had a multitude of hands, who were subject to the command of the master. The land yielded their food, live stock and game. The great rivers swarmed with fish for the taking. Their ships took the tobacco off their private wharves on the banks of the Potomac or the James River, and carried it to London or Bristol, bringing back English goods and articles of home manufacture in return for the only produce which the Virginian gentry chose to cultivate. Their hospitality was boundless. No stranger was ever sent away from their gates. The question ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... he cried again. "Why, that there's nothing to be had in the land except what the merchants bring. There's scarcely a smith or a wright or a cobbler between the James and the Potomac. If I want a bed to lie in, I have to wait till the coming of the tobacco convoy, and go down to the wharves and pay a hundred pounds of sweet-scented for a thing you would buy in the Candleriggs for twenty shillings. How, in God's name, is a farmer to live if he has to pay usury ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... some cause or other or the natural result of excessive congestion, the man was about to lose one-half of his organ; and Burnside at Fredericksburg was in no greater state of suspense and uncertainty with the fate of the Army of the Potomac on his hands than the writer must acknowledge he was with this man and his organ apparently liquefying under his treatment. The surprise can be better imagined than described when, on the following morning, the glans made its appearance safe and sound out ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... spring of 1613 Sir Samuel Argoll, while cruising in the Rappahannock in quest of corn, learned from the natives that the princess was visiting Japazaws, a neighboring king, at his village upon the Potomac. Argoll at once resolved to capture the daughter of the greatest enemy of the white men, and to hold her until all the tools and weapons stolen by the Indians had been returned.[102] Hastening into the country of the Potomacs, he demanded the maid of Japazaws. ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... "All quiet along the Potomac," whispered the colonel, with a momentary pride in the pacific relations he had established between ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... vessel with sails. I thank you for the volume of the Philadelphia transactions, which came safely to hand, and is, in my opinion, a very valuable volume, and contains many precious papers. The paccan-nut is, as you conjecture, the Illinois nut. The former is the vulgar name south of the Potomac, as also with the Indians and Spaniards, and enters also into the Botanical name which is Juglano Paccan. I have many volumes of the "Encyclopedie" for yourself and Dr. Franklin; but, as a winter passage is bad for books, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... The first Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, who secured the patent of 1632, never voyaged to Maryland as here described. Also, the grant was definite in bounds, from the Potomac to 40 deg. N. lat. Cecilius Calvert, the second lord, died in 1675. Charles Calvert, the third, was at this time both proprietary and governor, having come out to his province this winter, arriving in February, 1680. The writer erroneously attributes the granting ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... white man come. Not fum ober dere. De white man cum cross de Potomac, an' [HW: den he] cross de York ribber, an' den he cum on cross de Poquoson ribber into dis place. My pappy tell me jes' how cum dey cross all uh dose ribbers. He ain't see it, yuh unnerstand, but he hear tell how ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... intellects and keenest wits. Careful selections were there from Congress of those who held senates on their lips and kept together the machinery of an expanding nation; and those "rising men," soon to replace, or to struggle with them, across the narrow Potomac near by. To this society, too, the foreign legations furnished a strong element. Bred in courts, familiar with the theories of all the world, these men must prove valuable and agreeable addition to any society into ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... prophet. How can it be otherwise? What is to hold us together? Congress is a shadow, the executive a phantom too thin to cast a shadow. With two hundred armed men I could drive Congress, the President and Cabinet into the Potomac; with five hundred I could take New ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... consented to your going to sea but I would much rather have you go back to school and have a good education. According to these old Virginia days the oldest son in the family, when the father dies, receives a plantation and your brother, Laurence, has received a plantation on the Potomac. ...
— History Plays for the Grammar Grades • Mary Ella Lyng
... of war lies Washington, the capital of the Union, a place of great importance to the North for obvious reasons, and especially because if it fell European powers would be likely to recognise the Confederacy. It lies, on the Potomac, right upon the frontier; and could be menaced also in the rear, for the broad and fertile trough between the mountain chains formed by the valley of the Shenandoah River, which flows northward to join the Potomac at a point north-west of Washington, was in Confederate hands ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... the middle of July, and the Union and the Confederacy stood fairly opposed to each other. The Confederate Government, having established itself at Richmond, had pushed its outposts so far to the north that their sentries could see the dome of the Capitol across the Potomac. There were nearly eight hundred thousand square miles in the eleven seceded States, and of this immense territory all that remained to the Union were the few acres of ground enclosed within the walls of Fortress Monroe and Forts Pickens, Taylor, and Jefferson. Loyal Massachusetts men had been ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... hand heavily upon Prescott's shoulder. "This is the spirit that wins! We'll drive the Yankees into the Potomac now!" ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the desk, remarking, 'Take it out of that.' You could have knocked the court's eyes off with a club. I don't think he ever saw that much money in one group before in his life. The clerk of the court grabbed the fresh-air fund and did a rubber into the family safe for the change. All quiet along the Potomac. The whole blooming city didn't have change for a century note. Can you beat that? And they say there is no graft in Kansas. They had to go over to the speakeasy for a change. What do you know about that? A court of a Prohibition State going to a ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... has always operated as the line of cleavage between our northern and southern States. The French starting from Quebec floated from Lake Erie down the Allegheny to Pittsburgh, the English ascended the Potomac to Cumberland, and thence, following the most practicable watercourses, advanced on the French position at the junction of the Allegheny and the Monongahela. There Washington met and fought them in 1754, and ever after Washington maintained that the only method ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... being present, varied the proceedings with their inspiring songs. Lucy Stone, in introducing them, said Gen. McClellan was not willing they should sing on the other side of the Potomac, but we are glad to hear them everywhere. Susan B. Anthony presented a series of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage |
