The soldiers bivouacked at the Capitol in 1861 were from the states of New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. Emotions were high and at one point the soldiers discovered that one of the desks in the Senate chamber had belonged to Jefferson Davis, who was now the president of the enemy, the Confederate States of America.
They went after the desk with their bayonets but were stopped by the Senate doorkeeper, Isaac Bennett who ran among them and told them it was not his (Davis') desk, that it belonged to the government. "You were put here to protect, and not to destroy!" he shouted. "They stopped immediately and said I was right, they thought it belonged to Jefferson Davis."
Some of the men had already encountered battle before arriving at the Capitol. The Sixth Massachusetts had run into an angry Confederate mob when they had arrived at nearby Baltimore.
When they arrived at the Capitol, the doorkeeper described them as "a tired, bedraggled lot of men, showing every evidence of the struggle they had so recently passed through."
--Old Secesh
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