new roof-tree,—with muscles that were over-strained by the unpaid toil of Europe; but all ready to carry out the dreams of personal, manly, ennobling social life.

The best minds and the warmest hearts on the other side of the water understood America. They knew our history, and they burned with enthusiasm to mix their fortunes up with our earlier settlers.

They did; and even this tide of national disaster has hardly arrested their coming. They are arriving still, and they will yet find fertile soil and free institutions for their free possession, till at last all Europe and Asia will together rejoice in the triumph of the thoughts and desires of all the brave and humane men who constructed our system of civic life.

And thus we went on till 1860, pressing our free course to wealth without limit, to prosperity beyond our own comprehension, and to happiness so complete that we forgot the source of it all,—when we made the dreadful discovery, for the first time, that our career was arrested, for a while, if not forever. We were not going too fast; we were only on the wrong road. We were rushing madly from the sphere where our Maker had placed us, and he laid his great hand on his - own work, when suddenly thirty millions of people, under one government, stood paralyzed on the brink of ruin.

We had allowed Slavery to become the law of the land. We had dethroned the Liberty we had boasted of, and enthroned the Dagon of Human Servitude in its place. We had prostituted to the basest purpose the great gift bestowed on us so lavishly; and in the merciless greed for gain, when we already had a thousand times more than we could use, we ran riot into every form of luxury and licentiousness which could tempt the appetite, exalt the pride, or inflame the ambition of our people.

Religion, with all its sublime traditions, and all its holy beckonings to the better life we could lead, had lost much of its

magic power over the great masses, —over the young and the old, except the few who were mercifully removed from the great whirlpool of the heated life we were living; the rest all clutched like birds of prey for the nearest carrion; and we jumped the life to come.

In the midst of our National Belshazzar-Feast, of pride, voluptuousness, and enchantment, the shot at Fort Sumter fell like a bolt of lightning. It struck the hearts of the revellers, and we began to take our eyes from the dust and turn them up to heaven.

By one wave of that wand which never waves twice to do its work, the handwriting was written on all the walls, and the Palace of our greatness was sinking to ashes. The Republic was at stake. We had played, and we had lost.

We had attempted an impossibility. We had tried to make Liberty and Slavery live together in the same soil.

While the free North was prospering, we had allowed the enslaved to be immolated. While we could flourish under the fragrant branches of Liberty's tree, we were manuring the roots of the Upas, whose branches were spreading over our Northern communities, our homes, our hearts. Its subtle and deadly poison had already struck through the veins and arteries, and approached the springs of life.

For a moment we were like a traveller arrested in the speed of his journey, with a fevered pulse and difficult breathing. The discovery did not come all at once; nor is it certain that the nation has yet felt it deeply enough to be ready to reTo Europe it looked like the beginning of our national end,—an irrevocable leap to ruin.

cover.

Was it death? or was it fever with delirium ?

It was all!

The only question now, after two years of struggle, which blot out all the puny strifes of other empires, is, whether there is a resurrection and a redeemed life for the great Republic of the world.

II.

The Real Heroes of the War--The Rank and File in the

Hospital.

FIVE days after the first Bull Run battle, I went through the improvised military hospitals of Washington. Since those dark days of terror and blood, I have not left the District of Columbia, except for one day.

During these twenty-two months, I have seen, I suppose, not less than forty thousand of our wounded, sick, and disabled soldiers,—at one time hardly less than five thousand being here from my own State (New York). Very few days have gone by in which I have not seen some of their sick or wounded "companions in arms" from nearly all the other loyal States.

But my object is by no means to depict, even if my pen could do it, any very considerable number of scenes of agony, terror, or death. I shall not write a book of horrors; one rather of cheerfulness, heroism, and hope. There is light even in a Military Hospital. I have wished to "let that light out," and have it illumine a million of hearts and homes, far away from the halls and chambers that have been consecrated by a sublimity of patriotism, affection, love of home, and unfaltering endurance. One ray of such sunshine is worth more to the bereaved than a whole tale of tragedy, or a night of gloom.

As I could not expand the space allotted to this volume, my difficulty has been in knowing rather what I could best leave out than best put in. I have known some cases I would have gladly introduced, each of which would more than fill a

book like this. But I have endeavored to choose, from the wilderness of material, such scenes as would best illustrate the different phases of American character in the field and the hospital. In following this plan, I have preferred to take things somewhat at random; and, in sacrificing order in time and appropriateness of connection, I may have better succeeded (I trust) in bringing scenes more vividly to the mind of my reader.

Every case spoken of in this work I either witnessed myself, or I derived the facts from sources which stamp them with entire authenticity.

The great Prince Eugene once said, "Anybody can be brave in battle under a good leader; but he alone is the real hero who can be brave when the battle is over."

The decisive conflicts of armies may be, and generally are, short; but their results last forever.

Those who lead embattled hosts and come home unscarred from the fields where whole battalions melted into the earth, and corps d'armées parted never to form in battle-line again, are crowned with the wreath which Victory loves to throw over the brows of its chieftains. Their names embellish the stately pages of history. Their examples live in the dreams of all young soldiers the nights before they leave home for their first campaigns. Monuments rise with their sculptured emblems, "to greet the sun in his coming." The sword or battle-axe they drew, or swung, was in the cause of home, country, and heroism. These monuments become Meccas of human devotion; and to them the men of after-times go, as to sacred shrines, to pay their tributes of admiration and gratitude. But, while these proud names make their undisputed way down through the centuries, the great "rank and file," who won the field by their imperturbable coolness, the iron nerve that held steady when all was at stake,—hacked, hewn, battered, but immovable,-trusting in their leader,—

and at last slain,-these are forgotten. They are swept beyond the annals of history and the recollections of men.

Where are the innumerable hosts that followed the ensigns of the conquerors who founded the empires and dynasties of antiquity? Who has written their record? What monuments have preserved their deeds?

We know little on these subjects.

The Roman soldier, who left his wife on the banks of the Tiber, to carry the eagles of Italy to distant lands, was sure that his family would not be forgotten if he fell. If he lived, some part of the soil he helped to conquer became his own farm; and there, as a Roman military colonist, he remained as one of the pioneers of civilization, and a defender of "the Eternal Empire."

By modern nations it is now considered the duty of government to extend to the disabled soldier all its paternal aid. It is, however, only of recent date that the system of sanitary hospitals has been established, by which all the appliances of modern art should be brought into use to restore the health of the sick, bind up their wounds, and give back once more the shattered veteran to his home and his country.

England and France had been foremost in taking this grand step, to soften the asperities of war by the skill and humanity of science; and especially in the Crimea did the results place the whole world under obligation. With all the advantages of their experiments and demonstrations, our country was enabled to advance the sanitary military system by still further strides. In another portion of this volume I shall find space for some facts and illustrations on the matter, which I think legitimately appertain to the object I have in view.

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