WEAK IN BODY ONLY.

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I said, "and probably will not be called to do more than police duty. I hardly think there will be any fighting certainly nothing more than skirmishing." My speech took counsel of my wishes, for I did not believe what I said. But there was a general feeling that the rebellion would be suppressed speedily, and that the determined attitude of the North would end very shortly the hostile bluster of the South.

The pallid middle-aged mother was weak in body only. "If the country needs my boy for three months, or three years, I am not the woman to hinder him," was her answer. "He's all I've got, now that Clement is drowned; but when he told me he'd enlisted, I gave him my blessing, and told him to go for if we lose our country what is there to live for?"

My father's condition was so improved that there was no longer any need of my remaining in Boston. He lived, active and vigorous, and with perfect mental clearness, until within a few weeks of the surrender of Lee, in April, 1865 always admonishing me, whenever we met, that "the severest years of a war are the twenty-five that succeed it, when the demoralization which it has engendered is found in every department of business, society, and government." He had had experience in war and its demoralizing influence.

My husband's letters from Chicago were full of the war excitement of the West. The more than doubtful position of Missouri, and the fact that the lower tiers of counties of Illinois and Indiana were allied to the South by kinship, trade, and political sympathy, caused great anxiety. The banks of Illinois were based on Southern state bonds, and secession had caused suspension, failure, and financial distress. My

98

INTERVIEW WITH MR. GARRISON.

husband was editor and proprietor of a prosperous weekly paper, whose subscribers were scattered throughout the Northwest, and I was associated with him. I knew that a large proportion of them sympathized with the secessionists, and would immediately discontinue the paper, and become its active, open enemies, if its editors came out decidedly loyal to the Union, as he had written me we must do in the very next issue. I must hasten home to Chicago. But, before leaving, I coveted an interview with Mr. Garrison or Wendell Phillips. For many years they had been to me prophet and king, and I now sought them, as, of old, the oracles were consulted.

I found Mr. Garrison in his office on Washington Street, with composing-stick in hand, setting up matter for the next week's Liberator. He was as calm and serene as a summer morning. No one could have divined, from his passionless face and manner, that a hurricane of feeling was raging in the moral and political world.

"Mr. Garrison," I inquired, "what is your opinion of this Southern rebellion? Will it be a 'sixty days' flurry,' as Secretary Seward prophesies, or are we to have war?"

"We are to have war—a bloody, merciless war— a civil war, always more to be dreaded than one with a foreign nation."

"Do you think it will be a long war?"

"No one can tell. It may last as long as the War of the Revolution. The North underrates the power, purpose, and ability of the South, over which it expects an easy triumph. Instead of this, it will be plunged into a desperate struggle, of which it does. not dream."

PREDICTION OF WENDELL PHILLIPS.

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"What will be the result? How will the war end -in dissolution of the Union?"

"No one can answer that question. Of one thing only am I certain- the war will result in the death of slavery!

"Do you believe that, Mr. Garrison? Theodore Parker has predicted that slavery would go down in blood, but it has never seemed possible that his prophecy would be verified.”

At that moment Mr. Phillips entered, with the morning paper in hand, glowing with the account it gave of the magnificent ovation accorded the Sixth Massachusetts in its passage through New York. How impassioned he was, and yet how self-poised! If Mr. Garrison appeared the incarnation of serenity, Mr. Phillips seemed aglow with sacred fire. In the first pause of the conversation between the two men, I interrogated Mr. Phillips as I had Mr. Garrison.

"Mr. Garrison tells me that he is confident the war will result in the destruction of slavery. Do you share this confidence with him, Mr. Phillips?"

"Yes; slavery has taken the sword, and it will perish by the sword. Five years hence not a slave will be found on American soil!"

The next morning I left for Chicago. All along the route were excited groups of people, eager for news from Washington, and everywhere was displayed the national flag. At Albany, where we halted for dinner, we learned the reception given the Massachusetts Sixth in their passage through Baltimore the day before. A vast and angry crowd had opposed their progress, showers of stones and other missiles were hurled at them from the streets and house-tops, the soldiers had defended themselves and

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SOLDIERS MOBBED IN BALTIMORE.

fired into the mob, and the dead, dying, and wounded lay in the streets. So read the telegram. It was startling news, and blanched the cheeks of those who listened while the exaggerated accounts of the papers were being read. The war had indeed begun. The dead silence was broken by a tall, stern, sinewy, and grizzled Yankee, who had listened standing with both hands deeply plunged in his pockets.

"Waal, now, them Southern fire-eaters have gone and done it- that's a fact!"

The quaintness of the speech, with the peculiar tone and manner, spoke volumes. The breach between the North and South was fast becoming irreparable. War had begun in Baltimore, and its streets were reddened with fratricidal blood. The bodies of the Massachusetts fallen were "tenderly sent forward" to Governor Andrew, in obedience to his telegram. The whole city joined in the obsequies of these first martyrs of the new revolution, and, linking their memories with those of the early patriots who fell at Concord and Lexington, the drums that had done service at the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill, were beaten at the head of the funeral escort.

I was detained en route over Sunday in Auburn, N. Y. The war spirit was rampant there, as everywhere. A newly recruited company of volunteers were to leave on Monday morning for New York, and they were honored with a public leave-taking in one of the churches that evening. The spacious church was crowded to suffocation, as large an audience waiting outside as was packed within. The pulpit was decked with the national colors. Bunting festooned the walls and the sides of the gallery. The great audience rose, clapping and applauding,

INTENSE EXCITEMENT IN CHICAGO.

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as the soldiers filed into the pews reserved for them. The very air was electric with patriotic feeling. The sermon stirred the pulses like the blast of a bugle. It was a radical discourse, and recognized slavery as the underlying cause of the outbreak, which, it predicted, would result in the freedom of the Southern serfs.

The choir sang patriotic odes, the audience joining with one voice in the exultant refrain, "It is sweet, it is sweet, for one's country to die!" The great congregation without caught it, thrilling the evening air with the spirit of the hour, "It is sweet, it is sweet, for one's country to die!" So intense was the feeling that when an appeal was made from the pulpit transformed by the excitement into a recruiting office - for volunteers to defend the country, some half dozen rose, who were afterwards mustered into the service.

In Chicago there was more stir and excitement than I had seen elsewhere. The war spirit, war news, and war preparations engrossed everybody. The day presented scenes of din and bustle, and the night was scarcely less tranquil. The streets were thronged with eager men and women rushing here and there as incidents called them.

On the evening of the very day that Fort Sumter capitulated, an immense meeting of citizens was held in the great "Republican Wigwam," erected especially for the accommodation of the convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln to the presidency, less than a year before. It was now re-baptized, and called "National Hall," and was consecrated afresh, not to "party," but to "patriotism." Every inch of standing room was utilized on the ground floor, and