January 25. General Scott yields to the prayers of the Administration and has made up his mind to go to California, there to organize a campaign against Utah. So his daughter, Mrs. Colonel Scott, reports to Murray Hoffman. The General is a grand old fellow, too old for the fatigue and exposure of such an expedition. It’s not likely he will ever return. We must get up a graven image of him on the other side of Union Square to balance Colonel Jem Lee’s copper Washington.
. Much delighted with a child’s book by Charlotte Yonge, Landmarks of History; not so grand as the Prescotts and Macaulays, but looking at things more nearly as they are.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas
That did not happen but Scott did go to Washington state in 1859 to mediate the Pig War. I wonder how he travelled? No transcontinental train yet. Ship to Panama, across by rail, then ship again?
January 27, Yesterday there was abundant rain. I spent most of the evening with Ellie and Miss Rosalie at Lewis Rutherfurd’s pleasantly enough.* It was a small tea-drinking. As the sky was cloudy, the planets didn’t “receive” and we postponed our visit to the new observatory. The Columbia College instruments are there and Rutherford works with them very diligently.
* Lewis M. Rutherfurd had built a small observatory at his premises on Second Avenue at Eleventh Street; launching his pioneer work in astronomical photography, he obtained his first photographs of the moon this year.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas