THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD 1857-1864 89 



noon." But to me it was a fearful moment. Sumner's 

 remarks grated horribly upon my ears; true as his view 

 was, I could not yet accept it. 



And now preparations for war, and, indeed, for repel- 

 ling invasion, began in earnest. My friends all about me 

 were volunteering, and I also volunteered, but was re- 

 jected with scorn ; the examining physician saying to me, 

 "You will be a burden upon the government in the first 

 hospital you reach; you have not the constitution to be 

 of use in carrying a musket ; your work must be of a dif- 

 ferent sort." 



My work, then, through the summer was with those who 

 sought to raise troops and to provide equipments for 

 them. There was great need of this, and, in my opinion, 

 the American people have never appeared to better ad- 

 vantage than at that time, when they began to realize their 

 duty, and to set themselves at doing it. In every city, 

 village, and hamlet, men and women took hold of the work, 

 feeling that the war was their own personal business. No 

 other country since the world began has ever seen a more 

 noble outburst of patriotism or more efficient aid by in- 

 dividuals to their government. The National and State 

 authorities of course did everything in their power; but 

 men and women did not wait for them. With the excep- 

 tion of those whose bitter partizanship led them to oppose 

 the war in all its phases, men, women, and children en- 

 gaged heartily and efficiently in efforts to aid the Union 

 in its struggle. 



Various things showed the depths of this feeling. I 

 remember meeting one day, at that period, a man who had 

 risen by hard work from simple beginnings to the head 

 of an immense business, and had made himself a multi- 

 millionaire. He was a hard, determined, shrewd man of 

 affairs, the last man in the world to show anything like 

 sentimentalism, and as he said something advising an in- 

 vestment in the newly created National debt, I answered, 

 "You are not, then, one of those who believe that our 

 new debt will be repudiated I ' ' He answered : ' ' Eepudia- 



