CHAPTER XII 



THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR 



WHEN we returned to Cambridge we encountered a curious 

 sense of change which had taken place in our three months of 

 absence. When we left the feeling was general that the outbreak 

 of the South was a mere insurrection which would be quieted 

 by some small show of power on the part of the North, or, if it 

 did not quickly subside, that there would be a spontaneous 

 movement by the slaves for freedom, which would put an end 

 to the revolt by giving their masters business enough to attend 

 to at home. I knew better, for I had a nearer sense of the mo- 

 tives of the Southern people and of the state of mind of the 

 slaves ; though I did not think that the rebellion would develop 

 power so rapidly, I fully expected the war to last for many 

 years. To my friends in Cambridge the episode of Bull Run, 

 and the evidence that the Confederates were indeed in earnest, 

 was a surprise; it had brought out the dour element of the New- 

 Englander to such an extent that the look of the people on the 

 street had visibly changed. 



I found my master Agassiz greatly disturbed ; all along he had 

 taken the war as an end to his hopes. I recall how in that mis- 

 erable time of the bombardment of Sumter, when we South- 

 erners hung about the newspaper and telegraph offices all 

 night watching for news, I found him in the gray dawn walking 

 in Divinity Avenue weeping, almost raving in his misery. I 

 remember how he cried, " They will Mexicanize the country," 

 and my saying to him that we were a people who would do a 

 lot of fighting, but come out of it all in the English way, with 

 order and decency in the end. The fact that in a few weeks 

 after Sumter the North settled down to the business of prepara- 

 tion gave Agassiz courage; but with the certainty of a long grap- 



