Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, with the Massachusetts Eighth Regiment, reached the Susquehanna River at Havre de Grace. "The bridges are burned; you cannot reach Washington," was the word that came to him. The great ferry-boat, the steamer Maryland, was in the stream. "Seize

it," was the order. In a very short time the regiment was on board, and the Maryland steaming down Chesapeake Bay for Annapolis.

The New York Seventh Regiment was steaming down Delaware Bay on the steamer Boston, and up the Chesapeake to the same point.

Great the consternation of the secessionists at Annapolis when the Maryland entered the harbor. The Constitution-"Old Ironsides," the ship that won so many victories in 1812-was there without a crew. The secessionists were planning to take possession, but General Butler was too quick for them. The flag of the Confederacy never was to float aboveher deck.

The secessionists had torn up the railroad; but the men of the Eighth Massachusetts knew how to build railroads, and began to spike down the rails. They had taken the locomotive to pieces. "I helped make this locomotive; there is my mark," said a soldier, who laid aside his musket. and went to work with a wrench and hammer to put it in order. “Are there any soldiers here who can run the engine?" asked the colonel. Nineteen stepped from the ranks in response. The slave-holders had left out of their calculations the greatest factor of all-labor. How little did they comprehend, when they began the war, that the laborers-the men whoworked for their daily bread, the men who wore blue blouses and handled wrenches and hammers, who filed iron, who pushed the plane, who followed the plough-were the men who would reconstruct what slavery destroyed. There they were, at the outset, reconstructing the locomotive, the railroad, and in the end they would reconstruct the nation. Together the Massachusetts Eighth and the New York Seventh relaid the rails and made their way to Washington.

In Baltimore the secessionists had triumphed for a moment, but up in western Maryland, at Frederick and Hagerstown, the Union men were running up the Stars and Stripes. One evening, greatly to the astonishment of the secessionists, General Butler, at the head of his troops, marched. into the city, planted the Stars and Stripes, arrested the police-commissioners who were plotting treason, seized all the muskets and pistols they had collected, and set men to work repairing the bridges which had been burned. The Union men rejoiced; the secessionists gnashed their teeth. The slave-holders were confident that the State would secede. James R. Randall wrote the song "My Maryland," which was set to an old German

melody by Miss Carey, of Baltimore. She and her sister, Miss Hetty, were ardent secessionists. Their house was regarded by the Union men as the headquarters of secession. The ladies of Baltimore who sympathized with the South met there to make uniforms for Confederate soldiers. The song was first sung by Miss Carey in June, 1861. It was greatly applauded, and became very popular. It was sung everywhere throughout the South:

MARYLAND! MY MARYLAND!

9:

"The despot's heel is on thy shore,
His torch is at thy temple door,
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecks the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,

Maryland! my Maryland!

"I hear the distant thunder hum,
The old-time bugle, fife, and drum,
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb,
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum,
She breathes, she burns, she'll come-she'll come !
Maryland my Maryland!"

Vain the song! Ineffectual all the machinations of conspirators at Richmond and in Baltimore to bring about the secession of the State!

CHAPTER IV.

FIRST WEEKS OF THE WAR.

HE first week in June, 1861, I became a correspondent in the army.

THE

The music of the hour was
Baltimore presented a striking
and gloomy; only here and
Business was at a standstill.

My first observations were at Baltimore. In Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and in all Northern cities patriotism was at flood-tide. Everywhere flags were waving; the drum-beat was heard in every village; troops were drilling, companies and regiments organizing. Ladies wore Union rosettes of red, white, and blue. "Yankee Doodle" and "Hail Columbia." contrast to the other cities. It was dull there were the Stars and Stripes to be seen. It was a Southern city, but the secessionists, who in April had all but succeeded in taking the State out of the Union, finding that they had been foiled by the vigilance of the Government, were leaving Baltimore secretly, and making their way to Richmond to join the Confederate army. Ladies who sympathized with the South looked upon the Union soldiers as low, mean, vile, hateful creatures. They forgot their high breeding and ceased to be ladies when they daintily gathered up their skirts and spat at them upon the street. A regiment of Pennsylvania troops was drilling near Fort McHenry. A few days before they had been driving their teams afield or working in coal-mines, but now they were soldiers of the Republic. They knew very little of military affairs. They came, in their marching, upon a pool of water, and the 'colonel, not knowing the proper word of command to avoid it, shouted, "Gee round that hole!" They understood it. Out of such material the mighty armies of the Republic were organized.

Washington, on the other hand, was in a hubbub. Troops were pouring in, raw, undisciplined, yet of material such as the world had never seen— artisans, artists, farmers, mechanics, merchants, printers, painters, poets, bankers, men of letters, ministers of the Gospel; men from every calling and occupation were in the ranks, responding to the call of the President, and obeying the promptings of their own patriotic hearts. There was a