"Davis!"

"Hurrah for Jefferson Davis!"

"Speech—speech!"

"Davis!"

"Speech!"

There was something tense and compelling in the tones of these cries. They rang as bugle calls to battle. In their hum and murmur there was more than curiosity—more than the tribute of a people to their leader. There was in the very sound the electric rush of the first crash of the approaching storm. The man inside who had led soldiers to death on battle fields felt it instantly and the smile died on his thin lips. The roar outside his car window was not the cry of a mob echoing the sentiments of a leader. It was the shrill imperial cry of a rising people creating their leaders.

From the moment he bowed his head and lifted his hand over the crowd that greeted him, hopeless sorrow filled his soul.

War was inevitable.

These people did not realize it. But he saw it now in all its tragic import. He had intended to counsel patience, moderation and delay. Before the hot breath of the storm he felt already in his face such advice was a waste of words. He would tell them the simple truth. He could do most good in that way. These fiery, impulsive Southern people were tired of argument, tired of compromise, tired of delay. They were reared in the faith that their States were sovereign. And these Virginians had good reason for their faith. The bankers of Europe had but yesterday refused to buy the bonds of the United States Government unless countersigned by the State of Virginia!

These people not only believed in the sovereignty of their States and their right to withdraw from the Union when they saw fit, but they could not conceive the madness of the remaining States attempting to use force to hold them. They knew, too, that millions of Northern voters were as clear on that point as the people of the South.

Their spokesman, Horace Greeley, in The Tribune had said again and again:

"If the Southern States are mad enough to withdraw from the Union, they must go. We cannot prevent it. Let our erring sisters go in peace."

The people before him believed that Horace Greeley's paper represented the North in this utterance. Davis knew that it was not true.

In a flash of clear soul vision he saw the inevitable horror of the coming struggle and determined to tell the people so.

The message he delivered was a distinct shock. He not only told them in tones of deep and tender emotion that war was inevitable, but that it would be long and bloody.

"We'll lick 'em in two months!" a voice yelled in protest and the crowd cheered.

The leader shook his fine head.

"Don't deceive yourselves, my friends. War once begun, no man can predict its end—"

"It won't begin!" another cried.

"You have convinced me to-day that it is now inevitable."

"The Yankees won't fight!" shouted a big fellow in front.

The speaker bent his gaze on the stalwart figure in remonstrance.

"You never made a worse mistake in your life, my friend. I warn you—I know these Yankees. Once in it they'll fight with grim, dogged, sullen, unyielding courage. We're men of the same blood. They live North, you South—that's all the difference."

At every station the same scene was enacted. The crowd rushed around his car with the sudden sweep of a whirlwind, and left for their homes with grave, thoughtful faces.

By three o'clock in the afternoon he was thoroughly exhausted by the strain. The eager crowds had sapped his last ounce of vitality.

The conductor of the train looked at him with pity and whispered:

"I'll save you at the next station."

The leader smiled his gratitude for the sympathy but wondered how it could be done.

At the next stop, the Senator had just taken his position on the rear platform, lifted his hand for silence and said:

"Friends and fellow citizens—"

The engine suddenly blew off steam with hiss and roar and when it ceased the train pulled out with a jerk amid the shouts and protests of the crowd. The grateful speaker waved his hand in regretful but happy farewell.

The conductor repeated the trick for three stations until the exhausted speaker had recovered his strength and then allowed him a few brief remarks at each stop.

From the moment the train entered the State of Mississippi, grim, earnest men in groups of two, three, four and a dozen stepped on board, saluted their Chief and took their seats.

When the engine pulled into the station at Jackson a full brigade of volunteer soldiers had taken their places in the ranks.

The Governor and state officials met their leader and grasped his hand.

"You have been commissioned, Senator," the Governor began eagerly, "as Major-General in command of the forces of the State of Mississippi. Four Brigadier-Generals have been appointed and await your assignment for duty."

The tall figure of the hero of Buena Vista suddenly stiffened.

"I thank you. Governor, for the high honor conferred on me. No service could be more congenial to my feelings at this moment."

The Governor waved his hand at the crowd of silent waiting men. "Your men are ready—the first question is the purchase of arms. I think a stand of 75,000 will be sufficient for all contingencies?"

The Senator spoke with emphasis:

"The limit of your purchases should be our power to pay—"

"You can't mean it!" the Governor exclaimed.

"I repeat it—the limit of your purchase of arms should be the power to pay. I say this to every State in the South. We shall need all we can get and many more I fear."

The Governor laughed.

"General, you overrate our risks!"

"On the other hand," Davis continued earnestly, "we are sure to underestimate them at every turn."

He paused, overcome with emotion.

"A great war is impending, Governor, whose end no man can foresee. We are not prepared for it. We have no arms, we have no ammunition and we have no establishments to manufacture them. The South has never realized and does not now believe that the North will fight her on the issue of secession. They do not understand the silent growth of the power of centralization which has changed the opinions of the North under the teaching of Abolition fanatics—"

Again he paused, overcome.

"God help us!" he continued. "War is a terrible calamity even when waged against aliens and strangers—our people are mad. They know not what they do!"

The new Commander hurried to Briarfield, his plantation home, to complete his preparations for a long absence.

Socola on a sudden impulse asked the honor of accompanying him. It was granted without question and with cordial hospitality.

It was an opportunity not to be lost. An intimate view of this man in his home might be of the utmost importance. He promised Jennie to hasten to Fairview when he had spent two days at Briarfield. Mrs. Barton was glad of the opportunity to set her house in order for her charming and interesting guest.

The Davis plantation was a distinct shock to his fixed New England ideas of the hellish institution of Slavery.

The devotion of these simple black men and women to their master was not only genuine, it was pathetic. He had never before conceived the abject depths to which a human being might sink in contentment with chains.

And he had come to break chains! These poor ignorant blacks kissed the hand that bound them and called him their best friend.

The man they called master actually moved among them, a minister of love and mercy. He advised the negroes about the care of their families in his long absence. He talked as a Hebrew Patriarch to his children. He urged the younger men and women to look after the old and helpless.

He was particularly solicitous about Bob, the oldest man on the place. Over and over again he enumerated the comforts he thought he might need and made provision to supply them. He sent him enough cochineal flannel for his rheumatism to wrap him four-ply deep. For Rhinah, his wife, he ordered enough flannel blankets for two families.

"Is there anything else you can think of, Uncle Bob?" he asked kindly.

The old man scratched his gray head and hesitated, looked into his master's face, smiled and said:

"I would like one er dem rockin' cheers outen de big house, Marse Jeff.—yassah!"

"Of course, you shall have it. Come right up, you and Rhinah, and pick out the two you like best."

With suppressed laughter Socola watched the old negroes try each chair in the hallway and finally select the two best rockers in the house.

The Southern leader was obviously careworn and unhappy. Socola found his heart unconsciously going out to him in sympathy.

Assuming carefully his attitude of foreign detached interest, the young man sought to draw him out.

"You have given up all hope of adjustment and reunion with the North?" he asked.

"No," was the thoughtful reply, "not until the first blood is spilled."

"Your people must see, Senator, that secession will imperil the existence of their three thousand millions of dollars invested in slaves?"

"Certainly they see it," was the quick answer. "Slavery can never survive the first shot of war, no matter which side wins. If the North wins, we must free them, or else maintain a standing army on our borders for all time. It would be unthinkable. Rivers are bad boundaries. We could have no others. Fools have said and will continue to say that we are fighting to establish a slave empire. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are seeking to find that peace and tranquillity outside the Union we have not been able to enjoy for the past forty years inside. If the Southern States enact a Constitution of their own, they will merely reaffirm the Constitution of their fathers with no essential change. The North is leading a revolution, not the South.

"Not one man in twenty down here owns a slave. The South would never fight to maintain Slavery. We know that it is doomed. We simply demand as the sons of the men who created this Republic, equal rights under its laws. If we fight, it will be for our independence as freemen that we may maintain those rights."

"I must confess, sir," Socola replied with carefully modulated voice, "that I fail to see as a student from without, why, if Slavery is doomed and your leaders realize that fact, a compromise without bloodshed would not be possible?"

"If Slavery were the only issue, it would be possible—although as a proud and sensitive people we propose to be the judge of the time when we see fit to emancipate our slaves. Abolition fanatics, whose fathers sold their slaves to us, can't dictate to the South on such a moral issue."

"I see—your pride is involved."

"Not merely pride—our self-respect. In 1831 before the Northern Abolitionists began their crusade of violence there were one hundred four abolition societies in America—ninety-eight of them in the South and only six in the entire North. But the South grew rich. At the bottom of our whole trouble lies the issue of sectional power. New England threatened to secede from the Union when we added the Territory of Louisiana to our domain, out of which we have carved seven great States. Slavery at that time was not an issue. Sectional rivalry and sectional hatred antedates even our fight against England for our freedom. Washington was compelled to warn his soldiers when they entered New England to avoid the appearance of offense. The Governor of Massachusetts refused to call on George Washington, the first President of the Union, when he visited Boston.

"And mark you, back of the sectional issue looms a vastly bigger one—whether the Union is a Republic of republics or a Centralized Empire. The millions of foreigners who have poured into the North from Europe during the past thirty years, until their white population outnumbers ours four to one, know nothing and care nothing about the Constitution of our fathers. They know nothing and care nothing for the principles on which the Federal Union was founded. They came from empires. They think as their fathers thought in Europe. And they are driving the sons of the old Revolution in the North into the acceptance of the ideas of centralized power. If this tendency continues the President of the United States will become the most autocratic ruler of the world. The South stands for the sovereignty of the States as the only bulwark against the growth of this irresponsible centralized despotism. The Democratic party of the North, thank God, yet stands with us on that issue. Our only possible hope of success in case of war lies in this fact—"

Socola suddenly started.

"Quite so—I see—The North may be divided, the South will be a unit."

"Exactly; they'll fight as one man if they must."

The longer Socola talked with this pale, earnest, self-poised man, the deeper grew the conviction of his utter sincerity, his singleness of purpose, his pure and lofty patriotism. His conception of the man and his aims had completely changed and with this change of estimate came the deeper conviction of the vastness of the tragedy toward which the Nation was being hurled by some hidden, resistless power. He had come into the South with a sense of moral superiority and the consciousness not only of the righteousness of his cause but the certainty that God would swiftly confound the enemies of the Union. He had waked with a shock to the certainty that they were entering the arena of the mightiest conflict of the century.

He girded his soul anew for the role he had chosen to play. The character of this Southern leader held for him an endless fascination. It was part of his mission to study him and he lost no opportunity. The greatest surprise he received during his stay was the day of the election of President at Montgomery. He had expected to be present at this meeting of the Southern Convention but, hearing that it would be held behind closed doors, had decided on his visit to Briarfield.

A messenger dashed up to the gate, sprang from his horse, hurried into the garden, thrust a telegram into the Senator's hand.

He opened it without haste, and read it slowly. His face went white and he crushed the piece of paper with a sudden gesture of despair. For a moment he forgot his guest, his head was raised as if in prayer and from the depths came the agonizing cry of a soul in mortal anguish:

"Lord, God, if it be possible let this cup pass from me!"

A moment of dazed silence and he turned to Socola. He spoke as a judge pronouncing his own sentence of death. His voice trembled with despair and his lips twitched with pitiful suffering.

"I have been elected President of the Southern Confederacy!"

He handed the telegram to Socola, who scanned it with thrilling interest. He had half expected this announcement from the first. What he could not dream was the remarkable way in which the Southern leader would receive it.

"You are a foreigner, Signor. I may be permitted to speak freely to you. You are a man of culture and sympathy and you can understand me. As God is my judge, I have neither desired nor expected this position. I took particular pains to forestall and make it impossible. But it has come. I am not a politician. I have never stooped to their tricks. I cannot lie and smile and bend to low chicanery. I hate a fool and I cannot hedge and trim and be all things to all men. I have never been a demagogue. I'm too old to begin. Other men are better suited to this position than I—"

He paused, overcome. Socola studied him with surprise.

"Permit me to say, sir," he ventured disinterestedly, "that such a spirit is evidence that your people have risen to the occasion and that their choice may be an inspiration."

The leader's eye suddenly pierced his guest's.

"God knows what is best. It may be His hand. It may be that I must bow to His will—"

Again he paused and looked wistfully at Socola's youthful face.

"You are young, Signor—you do not know what it is to yield the last ambition of life! I have given all to my country for the past years. I have sacrificed health and wealth and every desire of my soul—peace and contentment here with those I love! When I saw this mighty struggle coming, I feared a tragic end for my people. I fear it now. The man who leads her armies will win immortality no matter what the fate of her cause—I've dreamed of this, Signor—but they've nailed me to the cross!"

He called his negroes together and made them an affectionate speech. They responded with deep expressions of their devotion and their faith. With the greatest sorrow of life darkening his soul he left next day for his inauguration at Montgomery.



CHAPTER IX

THE OLD REGIME

Socola left Briarfield with the assurance of the President-elect of the Confederacy that he might spend a week with the Bartons and yet be in ample time for the inauguration at Montgomery.

He boarded the steamer at the Davis landing and floated lazily down to Baton Rouge.

From Briarfield he carried an overwhelming impression of the folly of Slavery from its economic point of view. The thing which amazed his orderly New England mind was the confusion, the waste, the sentimental extravagance, the sheer idiocy of the slave system of labor as contrasted with the free labor of the North.

The one symbol before his vivid imagination was the sight of old Uncle Bob and Aunt Rhinah seated in their rocking chairs gravely listening to the patriarchal farewell of their master. The ancient seers dreamed of Nirvana. These two wonderful old Africans had surely found it in the new world. No wave of trouble could ever roll across their peaceful breasts so long as their lord and master lived. He was their king, their protector, their physician, their almoner, their friend. The burden of life was on his shoulders, not on theirs. Their working days were over. He must feed and clothe, house and care for their worthless bodies unto the end. And the number of these helpless ones were constantly increased.

He marveled at the folly that imagined such a system of labor possible in a real world where the iron laws of economic survival were allowed free play. He ceased to wonder why it still flourished in the South. The South was yet an unsettled jungle of bewildering tropical beauty. One might travel for miles and hundreds of miles without the sight of a single important town. Vast reaches of untouched forests stretched away in all directions. Apparently the foot of man had never pressed them. Rich plantations of thousands of acres were only scratched in spots to yield their marvelous harvests of cotton and cane, of rice and corn.

The idea of defending such a territory, extending over thousands of miles, from the invading hosts of the rich and densely populated North was preposterous. His heart leaped with the certainty of swift and sure triumph for the Union should the question be submitted to the test of the sword.

As the boat touched her landing at Baton Rouge, Jennie waved her welcome from the shore. The graceful figure of her younger brother stood straight and trim by her side in his new volunteer uniform. Whatever the political leaders might think or do, these Southern people meant to fight. There was no mistaking that fact. With every letter to his Chief in Washington he had made this plain. The deeper he had penetrated the lower South the more overwhelming this conviction had become.

For the moment he put the thought of his tragic mission out of his heart. There was something wonderful in the breath of this early Southern spring. The first week in February and flowers were blooming on every lawn of every embowered cottage and every stately house! The song of birds, the hum of bees, the sweet languor of the perfumed air found his inmost soul. The snows lay cold and still and deathlike over the Northern world.

This was fairyland.

And the Bartons' home on the banks of the river was the last touch that completed the capture of his imagination. Through a vista of overhanging boughs he caught the flash of its white fluted pillars in the distance. The broad verandas were arched with climbing roses. In the center of the sunlit space in front a fountain played, the splash of its cooling waters keeping time to the song of mocking birds in shrubs and trees. In the spacious grounds which swept to the water's edge more than a thousand magnificent trees spread their cooling shade. The white rays of the Southern sun shot through them like silver threads and glowed here and there in the changing, shimmering splotches on the ground.

And everywhere the grinning faces of slowly moving negroes. The very rhythm of their lazy walk seemed a part of the landscape.

This fairy world belonged to his country. His heart went out in renewed devotion. Not one shining Southern star should ever be torn from her diadem! He swore it.

For three days he bathed in the beauty and joy of a Southern home. He saw but little of Jennie. The boys absorbed him. They were eager for news. They plied him with a thousand questions. Tom was going to join the navy, Jimmie and Billy the army.

"Would the United States Army stand by the old flag?" Tom asked with painful eagerness.

Socola was non-committal.

"As a rule the sailor is loyal to the flag of his ship. It's the symbol of home, of country, of all he holds dear."

"That's so, too," Tom answered thoughtfully. "Well, we'll build a navy. We built the old one. We can build a new one!"

The last night he spent at Fairview was one never to be forgotten. It gave him another picture of the old regime. They sat on the great pillared front porch looking out on the silvery surface of the moonlit river. Jennie's grandfather. Colonel James Barton, a stately man of eighty-five, who had led a regiment with Jefferson Davis in the Mexican War, though at that time long past the age of military service, honored them with his presence to a late hour.

His eyes were failing but his voice was stentorian. Its tones had been developed to even deeper power during the past ten years owing to the deafness of his wife. This beautiful old woman sat softly rocking beside the Colonel, answering in gentle monosyllables the questions he roared into her ears.

To escape the volume of the Colonel's conversation Socola asked Jennie to walk to the river's edge.

They sat down on a bench perched high on the bluff which rose abruptly from the water at the lower end of the grounds. The scene was one of memorable beauty.

He laughed at the folly of his schemes to learn the inner secrets of the South. These people had no secrets. They wore their hearts on their sleeves. He had only to ask a question to receive the answer direct without reserve.

"Your three younger brothers will fight for the South, of course, Miss Jennie?"

"Of course—I only wish I were a man!"

"You have an older brother in New Orleans, I believe?"

"Judge Barton, yes."

"He, too, will enter the army?"

The girl drew a deep breath and hesitated.

"He says he will not. He is bitterly opposed to my father's views."

Socola's eyes sparkled.

"He is for the Union then?"

"Yes."

"He is a man of decided views and character I take it."

"Yes—as firm and unyielding in his position as my father on the other side."

"You will be very bitter towards him if war should come?"

"Bitter?" A little sob caught her voice. "He is my Big Brother. I love him. It would break my heart—that's all—but I'll love him always."

Her tones were music, her loyalty to her own so sweet in its simplicity, so utterly charming, he opened his lips to speak the first words to test her personal attitude toward him. A flirtation would be delightful with such a girl. And Mr. Dick Welford was a fearful temptation. He put the thought out of his heart. She was too good and fine to be made a pawn in such a game. Beside it was utterly unnecessary.

He had gotten exactly the information about this older brother in New Orleans he desired and sat in brooding silence.

Jennie rose suddenly.

"Oh, I forgot—I must go in. My maids are waiting for me, I've an affair to settle between them before they go to bed."

Socola accompanied her to the door and turned again on the lawn to enjoy the white glory of the Southern moon. The lights were still twinkling in the long rows of negro cabins that lined the way to the overseer's house. Through the shadows of the trees he could see the dark figures in the doorways of their cabins silhouetted against the lighted candles in the background.

He strolled leisurely into the lower hall. The door of the library was open. He paused at the scene within. A group of four little negro girls surrounded Jennie. She was reading the Bible to them.

"Can't you say your prayers together to-night?" the young mistress asked.

The kinky heads shook emphatically.

Lucy couldn't say hers with Amy:

"'Cause she ain't got no brother and sister to pray for."

Maggie couldn't say hers with Mandy:

"'Cause she ain't got no mother and father."

So each repeated her prayer alone and stood before their little mistress who sat in judgment on their day's deeds.

Lucy had jabbed a carving knife into Amy's arm in a fit of temper. Her prayer had made no mention of this important fact. The judge gave a tender lecture on the need of repentance. The little sullen black figure hung back stubbornly for a moment and walled her eyes at her enemy. A sudden burst of tears and they were in each other's arms, crying and begging forgiveness. And then they filed out, one by one.

"Good night, Miss Jennie!"

"Good night!"

"God bless you, Miss Jennie—"

"I'll never be bad no mo'!"

He had come to break the chains that cut through human flesh and he had found this—great God!

For hours he lay awake, dreaming with wide staring eyes of the long blood-stained history of human Slavery and its sharp contrast with the strange travesty of such an institution which the South was giving to the world.

He had barely lost consciousness when he leaped to the floor, roused by loud voices, tramping feet and the flash of weird lights on the lawn. Growls and long calls echoed from point to point on the spacious grounds, hulloes and echoing answers and the tramp of many feet.

Some horrible thing had happened—sudden death, murder or war had broken out. A voice was screaming from the balcony aloft that sounded like the trumpet of the arch-angel calling the end of time.

He listened.

It was old Colonel Barton yelling at the sleepy negroes. In heaven's high name what could they be doing?

Socola dressed hastily and rushed down-stairs. Jennie and the boys appeared almost at the same moment.

"What is it?" Socola asked excitedly. "War has been declared? The slaves have risen?"

Jennie laughed.

"No—no! Grandmamma smells a smell. She thinks something is burning somewhere."

"Oh—"

The whole place, house, yard, grounds, outhouses, swarmed with bellowing negroes. Those that were not bellowing were muttering in sleepy, quarrelsome protest.

And they all carried candles to look for a fire in the dark!

There were at least seventy—two-thirds of them too old or too young to be of any service, but they belonged to the house.

The old Colonel's voice could be heard a mile. In his nightgown he was roaring from the balcony, giving his orders for the busy crowd hunting for fire with their candles flickering in the shadows.

Old Mrs. Barton, serenely deaf, was of course oblivious of the sensation she had created. The loss of her hearing had rendered doubly acute her sense of smell. Candles had to be taken out of her room to be snuffed. Lamps were extinguished only on the portico or on the lawn. Violets she couldn't endure. A tea rose was never allowed in her room. Only one kind of sweet rose would she tolerate at close range.

In the mildest voice she was suggesting places to be searched.

Far out at the negro quarters the candle brigade at length gathered—the flickering lights closing in to a single point one by one.

The smell was found.

A family had been boiling soap—a slave-ridden plantation was a miniature world which must be practically self-supporting. There could be no economy of labor by its scientific division. Around the soap pot the negro woman had swept some woolen rags. They were smoldering there and the faint odor had been wafted to the great house.

Socola couldn't sleep. All night long he could hear that wild commotion—the old Colonel's voice roaring from the balcony and seventy sleepy, good-for-nothing negroes with lighted candles looking for a fire in the dark. When at last he was tired of laughing at the ridiculous picture, his foolish fancy took another turn and fixed itself again on old Bob and Aunt Rhinah in their rocking chairs, swathed in cochineal flannel.



CHAPTER X

THE GAUGE OF BATTLE

Socola found the little town of Montgomery, Alabama, breathing under a suppression of emotion that was little short of uncanny on the day Jefferson Davis was inaugurated President.

The streets were crowded to suffocation and tents were necessary to accommodate the people who could not be housed.

He was surprised at the strange quiet which the spirit of the new President had communicated to the people. There was no loud talk, no braggadocio, no threats, no clamor for war. On the contrary there had suddenly developed an overwhelming desire for a peaceful solution of the crisis.

The Convention which had unanimously elected Jefferson Davis, President, and Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President, had relegated the hot heads and fire eaters to the rear.

Three great agitators had really created the new nation, William L. Yancey of Alabama, Robert Toombs of Georgia and Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina. And they were consumed with ambition for the Presidency.

Toombs was the most commanding figure among the uncompromising advocates of secession in the South—an orator of consummate power, a man of wide learning and magnetic personality. William L. Yancey was as powerful an agitator as ever stirred the souls of an American audience since the foundation of our Republic. Barnwell Rhett of the Charleston Mercury was the most influential editor the country had ever produced.

Yet the suddenness with which these fiery leaders were dropped in the hour of crisis was so amazing to the men themselves they had not yet recovered sufficient breath to begin complaints.

Toombs destroyed what chance he ever had by getting drunk at a banquet the night before the Convention met. William L. Yancey's turbulent history ruled him out of consideration. He had killed his father-in-law in a street brawl. Rhett's extreme views had been the bugle call to battle but something more than sound was needed now.

Toombs was dropped even for Vice-President for Alexander H. Stephens, the man who had pleaded in tears with his State not to secede.

The highest honor had been forced on the one man in all the South who most passionately wished to avoid it.

So acute was the consciousness of tragedy there was scarcely a ripple of applause at public functions where Socola had looked for mad enthusiasm.

The old Constitution had been reenacted with no essential change. The new President had even insisted that the Provisional Congress retain the old flag as their emblem of nationality with only a new battle flag for use in case of war. The Congress over-ruled him at this point with an emphasis which they meant as a rebuke to his tendency to cling to the hope of reconciliation.

It was exactly one o'clock on Monday, February 18, 1861, that Jefferson Davis rose between the towering pillars of the State Capitol in Montgomery and began his inaugural address. It was careful, moderate, statesmanlike, and a model of classic English. The closing sentence swept the crowd.

"It is joyous in the midst of perilous times to look thus upon a people united in heart, whose one purpose of high resolve animates and actuates the whole; where the sacrifices to be made are not weighed in the balance against honor, and right, and liberty and equality."

The cheer that greeted his appeal rose and fell again and again the third time with redoubled power and enthusiasm.

The President-elect stepped forward, placed his hand on the open Bible, and took the oath of office. As the last word fell from his white lips cannon thundered a salute from the hill crest and the great silk ensign of the South was slowly lifted by the hand of the granddaughter of President Tyler.

As the breeze unrolled its huge red, white and blue folds against the shining Southern skies the crowd burst into hysterical applause.

A Nation had been born whose history might be brief, but the people who created it and the leader who guided its destiny were the pledge of its immortality.

Socola found no difficulty in possessing himself of every secret of the new Government. What was not proclaimed from the street corners and shouted from the housetops, the newspapers printed in double leads. The new Government had yet to organize its secret service.

The President addressed himself with energy to the task which confronted him. But seven States had yet enrolled in the Confederacy. Of four more he felt sure. The first attempt to coerce a Southern State by force of arms would close the ranks with Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas by his side. Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri were peopled by the South and the institution of Slavery bound them in a common cause.

And yet the defense of these eleven Southern States with their five million white population and four million blacks was a task to stagger the imagination of the greatest statesman of any age. This vast territory would present an open front on land of more than a thousand miles without a single natural barrier. Its sea coast presented three thousand miles of water front—open to the attack of the navy. This enormous coast of undefended shore was pierced by river after river whose broad, deep waters would carry the gunboats of an enemy into the heart of the South.

The audacity of our fathers in challenging the power of Great Britain was reasonable in comparison with the madness of the South's challenge to the North. Three thousand miles of storm-tossed ocean defended our Revolutionary ancestors from the base of the enemy supplies. Three thousand miles of undefended coast invited the attack of the U. S. Navy, while twenty million Northerners stood with their feet on the borders of the South ready to advance without the possibility of hindrance save the bare breasts of the men who might oppose them.

The difference between the sections in material resources was absurd. The North was rich and powerful Her engines of war were exhaustless and under perfect control. The railroads of the South were few and poorly equipped, with no work shops from which to renew their equipment when exhausted. The railroad system of the entire country was absolutely dependent on the North for supplies. The Missouri River was connected with the Northern seaboard by the finest system of railways in the world, with a total mileage of over thirty thousand. Its annual tonnage was thirty-six million and its revenue valued at four thousand millions of dollars. The annual value of the manufactures of the North was over two thousand millions, and their machinery was complete for the production of all the material of war. Her ships sailed every sea and she could draw upon the resources of the known world. Her manufacturing power compared to the South was five hundred to one.

No leader in the history of his race was ever confronted by such insuperable difficulties as faced Jefferson Davis.

He had been called to direct the government of a proud, sensitive, jealous people thrown without preparation into a position which threatened their existence, without an army, without arms, or the means to manufacture them, without even powder, or the means to make it, or the material out of which it must be made, without a navy or a single ship-yard in which to build one, and three thousand miles of coast to be defended against a navy which had whipped the greatest maritime nation of the world. His genius must meet every difficulty and supply every want or his Confederacy would fall at the first shock of war.

The one tremendous and apparently insuperable difficulty in case of war was the lack of a navy. A navy could not be built in a day, or a year or two years, were the resources of the Confederacy boundless. The ships of war now in the possession of the United States were of incalculable power in such a crisis. The South was cut in every quarter by navigable rivers. Many of their waters opened on Northern interiors accessible to great workshops from which new gunboats could be built with rapidity and launched against the South. The Mississippi River, navigable for a thousand miles, flowed through the entire breadth of the Confederacy with its approaches and its mouth in the hands of the North. Both the Tennessee and the Cumberland rivers had their mouths open to Northern frontiers and were navigable in midwinter for transports and gunboats which could pierce the heart of Tennessee and Alabama.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the first purpose of the President of the Confederacy was to secure peace by all means consistent with public honor and the trust imposed on him by the people.

His first official act was the dispatch of Confederate Commissioners to Washington to treat for peace.

The hope that they would be received with courtesy and consideration was a reasonable one. The greatest newspapers of the North were outspoken in their opposition to the use of arms against any State of the Union.

The New York Tribune, the creator of Lincoln's party, led in this opposition to the use of force. The Albany Argus and the New York Herald were equally emphatic. Governor Seymour of New York boldly declared in a great mass meeting his unalterable opposition to coercion. The Detroit Free Press suggested that a fire would be poured into the rear of any troops raised to coerce a State. It was already known that Mr. Lincoln would not advocate coercion in his inaugural.

Stephen A. Douglas, leader of the millions of the Northern Democracy, offered a resolution in the Senate of the United States recommending the immediate withdrawal of the garrisons from all forts within the limits of the States which had seceded except those at Key West and Dry Tortugas needful for coaling stations.

"I proclaim boldly," declared the Senator from Illinois, "the policy of those with whom I act. We are for peace!"

Socola reported to his Chief in Washington that nothing was more certain than that Jefferson Davis hoped for reunion, with guarantees against aggression by the stronger section of the Union.

Buchanan had agreed to receive the Southern Commissioners, and sent a message to Congress announcing their presence and their overtures.

The Commissioners found Washington seething with passion and trembling with excitement. Buchanan had collapsed in terror, fearing each hour to hear that his home had been sacked and burned at Wheatland.

But the Southern leaders' hope of peaceful settlement was based on a surer foundation than the shattered nerves of the feeble old man in the White House. Joseph Holt, the Secretary of War, was a Southern Democrat born in Kentucky, and from the State of Mississippi. Holt had called on Davis in Washington and assured him of his loyalty to the South and her people. The President of the Confederacy knew of his consuming personal ambitions and had assured him of his influence to secure generous treatment.

But the Secretary of War had received information from the South. He had studied the situation carefully. He believed his chances of advancement in the North a better risk. The new Government had ignored him in the selection of a Cabinet—and with quick decision he cast his fortunes with the Union. That he had deceived Davis and Clay, to whom he had given his pledge of Southern loyalty, was a matter of no importance, save that these two men, who alone knew his treachery, were marked for his vengeance.

Little could they dream in this hour the strange end toward which Fate was even now hurrying them through the machinations of this sullen, envious Southern renegade.

The Secretary of War placed his big fist on the throat of the trembling President, and the Peace Commissioners could not reach the White House or its councils.

They were forced to await the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.

Jefferson Davis gave himself body and soul to the task of preparing his over-sanguine, credulous people for the possible tragedy of war.

General Beauregard was ordered to command the forces in South Carolina, and erect batteries for the defense of Charleston and the reduction of Fort Sumter in case of an attempt to reenforce it. This grim fort, in the center of the harbor of the chief Southern Atlantic city, commanded the gateway of the Confederacy. If it should be reenforced, the Confederate Government might be strangled by the fall of Charleston, and the landing of an army even before a blow could be struck.

Captain Raphael Semmes was sent North to buy every gun in the market. He was directed to secure machinery, and skilled workingmen to man it, for the establishment of arsenals and shops, and above all to buy any vessel afloat suitable for offensive or defensive work. Not a single ship of any description could be had, and the intervention of the authorities finally prevented the delivery of a single piece of machinery or the arms he had purchased.

Major Huse was sent to Europe on the third day after the inauguration at Montgomery on a similar mission.

General G. W. Rains was appointed to establish a manufactory for ammunition. His work was an achievement of genius. He created artificial niter beds, from which sufficient saltpeter was obtained, and within a year was furnishing the finest powder.

General Gorgas was appointed Chief of Ordnance. There was but one iron mill in the South which could cast a cannon, and that was the little Tredegar works at Richmond, Virginia. The State of Virginia had voted against secession and it would require the first act of war against her Southern sisters to bring her to their defense.

The widespread belief in the North that the South had secretly prepared for war, was utterly false, and yet the impression was of the utmost importance to the President of the Confederacy. It gave his weak government a fictitious strength, and gave him a brief time in which to prepare his raw recruits for their first battle.

Day and night he prayed for peace at any sacrifice save that of honor. The first bloodshed would be the match in the powder magazine. He pressed his Commissioners in Washington for haste.

The inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln had been so carefully worded, its utterances so conservative and guarded, his expressions of good will toward the South so surprisingly emphatic, that Davis could not believe an act of aggression which would bring bloodshed could be committed by his order.

And yet day dragged after day with no opportunity afforded his Commissioners to treat with the new Administration save through the undignified course of an intermediary. The Southern President ordered that all questions of form or ceremony be waived.

Seward, the Secretary of State, gave to these Commissioners repeated assurances of the peaceful intention of the Government at Washington, and the most positive promise that Fort Sumter would be evacuated. He also declared that no measure would be instituted either by the Executive or Congress changing the situation except on due notice given the Commissioners.

These assurances were accepted by the Confederate President in absolute good faith. And yet early in April the news was flashed to Montgomery that extraordinary preparations were being made in the Northern ports for a military and naval expedition against the South. On April the fifth, sixth and seventh, a fleet of transports and warships with shotted guns, munitions and military supplies sailed for Charleston.

The Commissioners in alarm requested an answer to their proposals. To their amazement they were informed that the President of the United States had already determined to hold no communication with them whatever in any capacity or listen to any proposals they had to make.

On Beauregard's report to them that Anderson was endeavoring to strengthen his position instead of evacuating the Fort the Commissioners again communicated with Mr. Seward.

The wily Secretary of State assured them that the Government had not receded from his promise. On April seventh Mr. Seward sent them this message:

"Faith as to Sumter fully kept: wait and see."

His war fleet was already on the high seas, their black prows pointed southward, their one hundred and twenty guns shotted, their battle flags streaming in the sky!

Lincoln's sense of personal honor was too keen to permit this crooked piece of diplomacy to stain the opening of his administration. He dispatched a special messenger to the Governor of South Carolina and gave notice of his purpose to use force if opposed in his intention of supplying Fort Sumter.

On the eve of the day the fleet was scheduled to arrive this notice was delivered. But a storm at sea had delayed the expedition and Beauregard asked the President of the Confederacy for instructions.

His Cabinet was called, and its opinion was unanimous that Fort Sumter must be reduced or the Confederacy dissolved. There was no choice.

Their President rose, his drawn face deadly pale:

"I agree with you, gentlemen. The order of the sailing of the fleet was a declaration of war. The responsibility is on their shoulders, not ours. To juggle for position as to who shall fire the first gun in such an hour is unworthy of a great people and their cause. A deadly weapon has been aimed at our heart. Only a fool would wait until the shot has been fired. The assault has already been made. It is of no importance who shall strike the first blow or fire the first gun."

With quick decision he seized his pen and wrote the order for the reduction of Fort Sumter.



CHAPTER XI

JENNIE'S VISION

Wild rumors of bombardment held Charleston in a spell.

Jennie Barton sat alone on the roof of her aunt's house at two o'clock on the morning of April 13. The others had gone to bed, certain that the rumors were false. She had somehow felt the certainty of the crash.

Seated beside the brick coping of the roof she leaned the strong little chin in her hands, waited and watched. Lights were flickering around the shore batteries like fireflies winking in the shadows of deep woods. Her three brothers were there. She might look on their dead faces to-morrow. Her father had rushed to Charleston from Washington at the first news of the sailing of the fleet. He had begged and pleaded with General Beauregard to reduce the Fort immediately, with or without orders from Davis.

"For God's sake, use your discretion as Commanding General and open fire. If that fleet reaches Sumter the cause of the Confederacy is lost. Old Davis is too slow. He's still crying peace, peace, when there is no peace. The war has begun!"

The General calmly shook his head and asked for instructions.

Besides losing her brothers, she might be an orphan to-morrow. Her father was quite capable of an attack on Sumter without orders. And if the bombardment should begin he would probably be roaming over the harbor from fort to fort, superintending the job under the guns of both sides.

"If Anderson does not accept the terms of surrender offered he will be fired on at four o'clock." Jennie repeated the headlines of the extra with a shiver.

The chimes of St. Michael's struck three. The minutes slowly dragged. The half hour was sung through the soft balmy air of the Southern spring.

Dick Welford, too, was behind one of those black guns on the shore. How handsome he had looked in his bright new uniform! He was a soldier from the crown of his blond head to the soles of his heavy feet. He had laughed at danger. She had liked him for that. He hadn't posed. He hadn't asked for sympathy or admiration. He just marched to his duty with the quick, firm step of the man who means business.

She was sorry now she hadn't told him how much she liked and admired him. She might not have another chance—

"Nonsense, of course I will!" she murmured with a toss of her brown head.

A dog barked across the street, and a wagon rattled hurriedly over the cobblestones below. A rooster crowed for day.

She looked across the way, and a dark group of whispering women were huddled in a corner on the roof, their gaze fixed on Sumter.

Another wagon rumbled heavily over the cobbles, and another, and another. A blue light flamed from Fort Sumter, blinking at intervals. Anderson was signaling someone. To the fleet that lay on the eastern horizon beyond the bar, perhaps.

The chimes of St. Michael struck the fatal hour of four. Their sweet notes rang clear and soft and musical over the dim housetops just as they had sung to the sleeping world through years of joyous peace.

Jennie sprang to her feet and strained her eyes toward the black lump that was Sumter out in the harbor. She waited with quick beating heart for the first flash of red from the shore batteries. It did not come. Five minutes passed that seemed an hour, and still no sound of war.

Only those wagons were rumbling now at closer intervals—one after the other in quick succession. They were ammunition trains! The crack of the drivers' whips could be heard distinctly, and the cries of the men urging their horses on. The noise became at last a dull, continuous roar.

The chimes from the old church tower again sang the half hour and then it came—a sudden sword leap of red flame on the horizon! A shell rose in the sky, glowing in pale phosphorescent trail, and burst in a flash of blinding flame over the dark lump in the harbor. The flash had illumined the waters and revealed the clear outlines of the casemates with their black mouths of steel gaping through the portholes. A roar of deep, dull thunder shook the world.

Jennie fell on her knees with clasped hands and upturned face. Her lips were not moving, and no sound came from the little dry throat, but from the depths of her heart rose the old, old cry of love.

"Lord have mercy on my darling brothers, and keep them safe—let no harm come to them—and Dick, too—brave and strong!"

The house below was stirring with the rush of hurrying feet in the corridors and the clatter on the narrow stairs that led to the roof. They crowded to the edge and gazed seaward. The hum of voices came now from every house. Women were crying. Some were praying. Men were talking in low, excited tones.

Jennie paid no attention to the people about her. Her eyes were fixed on those tongues of flame that circled Sumter.

Anderson was firing now, his big guns flashing their defiant answer to Beauregard's batteries. Jennie watched the lurid track of his shells with sickening dread.

A man standing beside her in the gray dawn spoke.

"A waste of ammunition!"

The cannon boomed now with the regular throb of a great human pulse. The sobs and excited cries and prayers of women had become a part of the weird scene.

A young mother stood beside Jennie with a baby boy in her arms. He was delighted with the splendid display and the roar of the guns.

He pointed his fingers to the circling shells and cried:

"'Ook, mamma, 'ook!"

The mother made no answer. Only with her hungry eyes did she follow their track to the shore. Her mate was there.

The baby clapped his hands and caught the rhythm of the throb and roar of the cannon in his little voice:

"Boom!—Boom!"

The sun rose from the sea, a ball of dull red fire glowing ominously through the haze of smoke that hung in the sky.

Hour after hour the guns pealed, the windows rattled and the earth trembled.

Couriers were dashing into the city with reports from the batteries. Soldiers were marching through the streets. It was reported that the men from the fleet would attempt a landing.

The women rushed to the little iron balcony and watched the troops marching to repel them.

In the first line Jennie saw the tall figure of Dick Welford. He glanced upward, lifted his cap and held it steadily in his hand for four blocks until they turned and swept out of sight.

Jennie was leaning on the rail with tear-dimmed eyes.

"I wonder why that soldier took his hat off?" her aunt asked.

"Yes—I wonder!" was the soft answer.

By three o'clock it was known that not a man had been killed at either of the shore batteries and women began to smile and breathe once more.

The newsboys were screaming an extra.

Jennie hurried into the street and bought one.

In big black headlines she read:

RICHMOND AND WASHINGTON ABLAZE WITH EXCITEMENT!

THE NORTH WILD WITH RAGE

VIRGINIA AND NORTH CAROLINA ARMING TO COME TO OUR RESCUE!

She walked rapidly to the water's edge to get the latest news from the front. A tiny rowboat was deliberately pulling through the harbor squarely under the guns of Sumter. She watched it with amazement, looking each moment to see it disappear beneath the waves. It was probably her foolish father.

With steady, even stroke the boatman pulled for the shore as unconcerned as if he were listening to the rattle of firecrackers on the fourth of July.

To her surprise it proved to be a negro. He tied his boat and deliberately unloaded his supply of vegetables. His stolid, sphinx-like face showed neither fear nor interest.

"Weren't you afraid of Anderson's cannon, uncle?" Jennie asked.

"Nobum—nobum—"

"You might have been blown to pieces—"

"Nobum—Marse Anderson daresn't hit me!"

"Why not?"

"He knows my marster don't 'low nuttin like dat—I'se too val'eble er nigger. Nobum, dey ain't none ob 'em gwine ter pester me, an' I ain't gwine ter meddle wid dem—dey kin des fight hit out twixt 'em—"

Through the long night the steady boom of cannon, and the scream of shells from the shore.

At one o'clock next day the flagstaff was cut down by a solid shot, and Sumter was silent.

At three o'clock a mob surged up the street following Senator Barton, who had just come from the harbor. He was on his way to Beauregard's headquarters.

Anderson had surrendered.

A strange quiet held the city. There was no jubilation, no bonfires, no illuminations to celebrate the victory. A sigh of relief for deliverance from a great danger that had threatened their life—that was all.

The Southern flag was flying now from the battered walls, and the people were content. They were glad that Beauregard had given old Bob Anderson the privilege of saluting his flag and marching out with the honors of war. All they asked was to be let alone.

And they were doubly grateful for the strange Providence that had saved every soldier's life while the walls of the Fort had been hammered into a shapeless mass. No blood had yet been spilled on either side. The President of the Confederacy caught the wonderful news from the wires with a cry of joy.

"Peace may yet be possible!" he exclaimed excitedly. "No blood has been spilled in actual conflict—"

His joy was short lived. A rude awakening was in store.

Dick Welford strolled along the brilliantly lighted "Battery" that night with Jennie's little hand resting on his arm.

"I tell you, Jennie, I was scared!" he was saying with boyish earnestness. "You see a fellow never knows how he's going to come out of a close place like that till he tries it. I had a fine uniform and I'd learned the drill and all that—but I had not smelled brimstone at short range. I didn't know how I'd do under fire. Now I know I'm a worthy descendant of my old Scotch-Irish ancestor who held a British officer before him for a shield and gracefully backed out of danger."

They stopped and gazed over the lazy, shimmering waters of the harbor.

Jennie looked up into his manly face with a glow of pride.

"You're splendid, Dick,—I'm proud of you!"

"Are you?" he asked eagerly.

"Yes. You're just like my brothers."

"Look here now, Jennie," he protested, "don't you go telling me that you'll be a sister to me. I've got a lot of sisters at home and I don't need any more—"

"I didn't mean it that way, Dick," she responded tenderly. "My brothers are just the finest, bravest men that God ever made in this world—that's what I meant."

"Don't you like me a little?"

"I almost love you to-night—maybe it's our victory—maybe it's the fear that made me pray for you and the boys on that house top the other night—I don't know—"

"Did you pray for me?" he asked softly.

"Yes—"

"I ought to be satisfied with that, but I'm not—I want you! Won't you be mine?"

She smiled into his eager face in a gentle, whimsical way. A half promise to him was just trembling on her lips when Socola's slender, erect figure suddenly crossed the street. He lifted his hat with a genial bow.

Dick ground his teeth in a smothered oath, and Jennie spoke abruptly:

"Come—it's late—we must go in."

Through the long night the girl lay awake with the calm, persistent, smiling face of the foreigner looking into the depths of her brown eyes.



CHAPTER XII

A LITTLE CLOUD

The first aggressive act of the President of the Confederacy revealed his alert and far-seeing mind. His keen eye was bent upon the sea, with an instinctive appreciation of the tremendous import of the long Southern coast line.

Without a ship afloat or a single navy yard, by a stroke of his pen he created a fleet destined to sweep the commerce of the North from every sea. His task was to create something out of nothing and how well he did it events swiftly bore their testimony.

The United States Government was the only nation which had refused to join the agreement to abandon the use of letters of marque and reprisal for destroying the unarmed vessels of commerce in time of war. This unfortunate piece of diplomacy gave Jefferson Davis the opportunity to strike his first blow at the power and prestige of the North.

He immediately issued a proclamation offering to issue such letters to any ship that would arm herself and enlist under the ensign of the Confederate navy. The response was quick and the ultimate result the lowering of the flag of the Union from practically every ship of commerce that sailed the ocean.

Gideon Welles conferred with his Chief in Washington and Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation which at the time created scarcely a ripple of excitement. And yet that order was the most important document which came from the White House during the entire four years of the war.

When the test came sixteen captains, thirty-four commanders and one hundred and eleven midshipmen resigned and cast their fortunes with the South. Not one of them attempted to use his position to surrender a ship.

Small as it was, the entire navy of the United States was practically intact. It comprised ninety ships of war—forty-two of them ready for active service. The majority of the vessels ready for war were steam-propelled craft of the latest improved type.

The United States had been one of the first world powers to realize the value of steam and rebuild its navy accordingly. In twenty years, practically a new navy had been constructed, ranking in effective power third only to England and France. Within the past five years, the Government had built the steam frigates, Merrimac, Niagara, Colorado, Wabash, Minnesota, and Roanoke. In addition to these twelve powerful steam sloops of war had been commissioned—the Hartford, Brooklyn, Lancaster, Richmond, Narragansett, Dakota, Iroquois, Wyoming, and Seminole. They were of the highest type of construction and compared favorably with the best ships of the world.

These ships at the opening of the war were widely scattered, but their homeward bound streamers were all fluttering in the sky.

President Lincoln in his proclamation ordered the most remarkable blockade in the history of the world. This document declared three thousand miles of Southern coast, from the Virginia Capes to the Rio Grande, closed to the commerce of the world.

The little fleet boldly sailed on its tremendous mission. The smoke of its funnels made but a tiny smudge on the wide, shining Southern skies. But with swift and terrible swirl this cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, grew into a storm whose black shadow shrouded the Southland in gloom.



CHAPTER XIII

THE CLOSING OF THE RANKS

A wave of fierce anger swept the North. The fall of Sumter was the one topic on every lip. Men stopped their trade, their work, their play and looked about them for the nearest rallying ground of soldiers.

The President of the United States was quick to seize the favorable moment to call for 75,000 volunteers. That these troops were to fight the Confederacy was not questioned for a moment.

The effect of this proclamation on the South was a political earthquake. In a single day all differences of opinion were sunk in the common cause. A feeling of profound wonder swept every thoughtful man within the Southern States. To this moment, even a majority of those who favored the policy of secession had done so under the belief that it was the surest way of securing redress of grievances and of bringing the Federal Government back to its original Constitutional principles. Many of them believed, and all of their leaders in authority hoped, that a re-formation of the Union would soon take place in peaceful ways on the basis of the new Constitution proclaimed at Montgomery. Many Northern newspapers, led by the New York Herald, had advocated this course. The hope of the majority of the Southern people was steadfast that the Union would thus be continued and strengthened, and made more perfect, as it had been in 1789 after the withdrawal of nine States from the Old Union by the adoption of the Constitution of 1787.

Abraham Lincoln's proclamation shattered all hope of such peaceful adjustment.

Thousands of the best men in Virginia and North Carolina had voted against secession. Not one of them, in the face of this proclamation, would dispute longer with their brethren. Whatever they might think about the expediency of withdrawing from the Union, they were absolutely clear on two points. The President of the United States had no power under the charter of our Government to declare war. Congress only could do that. If the Cotton States were out of the Union, his act was illegal because the usurpation of supreme power. If they were yet in the Union, the raising of an army to invade their homes was a plain violation of the Constitution.

The heart of the South beat as one man. The cause of the war had been suddenly shifted to a broader and deeper foundation about which no possible difference could ever again arise in the Southern States.

The demand for soldiers to invade the South was a bugle call to Southern manhood to fight for their liberties and defend their homes. It gave even to the staunchest Union men of the Old South the overt act of an open breach of the Constitution. From the moment Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a war without the act of Congress, from that moment he became a dictator and a despot who deliberately sought to destroy their liberties.

The cause of the South not only meant the defense of their homes from foreign invasion; it became a holy crusade for the reestablishment of Constitutional freedom.

Virginia immediately seceded from the Union by the vote of the same men who had refused to secede but a few weeks before. The old flag fell from its staff on her Capitol and the new symbol of Southern unity was unfurled in its place. As if by magic the new flag fluttered from every hill, housetop and window, while crowds surged through the streets shouting and waving it aloft. Cannon boomed its advent and cheering thousands saluted it.

A great torchlight parade illumined the streets on April 19. In this procession walked the men who a week ago had marched through Franklin Street waving the old flag of the Union and shouting themselves hoarse in their determination to uphold it. They had signed the ordinance of secession with streaming eyes, but they signed it with firm hands, and sent their sons to the muster fields next day.

Augusta County, a Whig and Union center, and Rockingham, an equally strong Democratic Union county, each contributed fifteen hundred soldiers to the new cause. Women not only began to prepare the equipment for their men, but many of them began to arm and practice themselves. Boys from ten to fourteen were daily drilling. In Petersburg three hundred free negroes offered their services to fight or to ditch and dig.

The bitterness of the answers of the Southern Governors from the Border States yet in the Union amazed the President at Washington.

His demand for troops was refused in tones of scorn and defiance.

Governor Magoffin of Kentucky replied:

"The State will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States."

Governor Harris telegraphed from Nashville:

"The State of Tennessee will not furnish a single man for coercion, but fifty thousand if necessary for the defense of her rights."

The message of Governor Ellis of North Carolina was equally emphatic:

"I will be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of our country, and to this war upon the liberties of a free people."

Governor Rector of Arkansas replied:

"Your demand adds insult to injury."

Governor Jackson of Missouri was indignant beyond all others:

"Your requisition in my judgment is illegal, unconstitutional, and revolutionary—its objects inhuman and diabolical."

Tennessee followed Virginia by seceding on May 6. Arkansas on May 18, and North Carolina by unanimous vote on May 21.

North Carolina had been slow to announce her final separation from the old Union. But she had been prompt in proclaiming her own sovereign rights within her territory when the National Government had dared to call them in question. On the day the President had issued his proclamation she seized Fort Macon at Beaufort. Fort Caswell was taken and garrisoned by her volunteers, and on April 19, the arsenal at Fayetteville was captured without bloodshed. The value of this achievement to the South was incalculable. The Confederacy thus secured sixty-five thousand stand of arms, of which twenty-eight thousand were of the most modern pattern.

Virginia had seceded on April 17 and immediately moved to secure under the resumption of her complete sovereignty all the arms, munitions of war, ship stores and military posts within her borders. Two posts of tremendous importance she attempted to seize at once—the great navy yard at Norfolk and the arsenal and shops at Harper's Ferry. The navy yard contained a magnificent dry dock worth millions, huge ship houses, supplies, ammunition, small arms and cannon, and had lying in its basin several vessels of war, complete and incomplete.

Harper's Ferry contained ten thousand muskets, five thousand rifles and a complete set of machinery for the manufacture of arms capable of turning out two thousand muskets a month.

A force of Virginia volunteers moved on Harper's Ferry. The small Federal garrison asked for a parley, which was granted. In a short time flames were pouring from the armory and arsenal. The garrison had set fire to the buildings and escaped across the railroad bridge into Maryland.

The Virginia troops rushed into the burning buildings, and saved five thousand muskets and three thousand unfinished rifles. The garrison had laid trains of powder to blow up the workshops, but the Virginians extinguished the flames and saved to the South the invaluable machinery for making and repairing muskets and rifles. It was shipped to Fayetteville and Richmond and installed for safety.

The destruction of the navy yard at Norfolk was more complete and irreparable. The dry dock was little damaged, but the destruction of stores and property was enormous. All ships in the harbor were set on fire and scuttled.

Events moved now with swift and terrible certainty.

Massachusetts attempted, on April 19, to send a regiment through the streets of Baltimore to invade the South, and the indignant wrath of her citizens could not be controlled by the mayor or police. The street cars on which they were riding across town to the Camden station were thrown from the tracks. The crowds jammed the streets and shouted their curses in the face of the advancing volunteers. Stones were hurled into their ranks and two soldiers dropped. A volley was poured into the crowd and several fell dead and wounded.

The crowd went mad. Revolvers were drawn and fired point blank into the ranks of the soldiers and those who were unarmed rushed to arm themselves. From Frederic to Smith Streets the firing on both sides continued with the regular crash of battle. Citizens were falling, but even the unarmed men continued to press forward and hurl stones into the ranks of the New Englanders.

The troops began to yield before the determined onslaughts of the infuriated crowds, bewildered and apparently without real commanders. They pressed through the streets, staggering, confused, breaking into a run and turning to fire on their assailants as they retreated.

Harassed, bleeding and exhausted, the regiment at last reached the Baltimore & Ohio station. The fight continued without pause. Volleys of stones were hurled into the cars, shattering windows and paneling. The troops were ordered to lie down on the floors and keep their heads below the line of the windows. Maddened men pressed to the car windows, cursing and yelling their defiance. For half a mile along the tracks the crowd struggled and shouted, piling the rails with new obstructions as fast as policemen could remove them. Through a steady roar of hoots, yells and curses the train at last pulled slowly out, the troops pouring a volley into the crowd.

In this first irregular battle of the sections the Massachusetts regiment lost four killed and thirty-six wounded. The Baltimoreans lost twelve killed and an unknown number wounded.

A wave of tremendous excitement swept the State of Maryland. Bridges on all railroads leading north were immediately burned and the City of Washington cut off from communication with the outside world. Troops were compelled to avoid Baltimore and find transportation by water to Annapolis. Mass meetings were held and speeches of bitter defiance hurled against the Federal Government. The Baltimore Council appropriated five hundred thousand dollars to put the city in a state of defense, though the State had proclaimed its neutrality.

The shrewd, good-natured, even-tempered President at Washington used all his powers of personal diplomacy to pour oil on the troubled waters of Maryland. In the meantime with swift, sure, and merciless tread he moved on the turbulent State with the power of Federal arms. It was impossible to hold the Capital of the Nation with a hostile State separating it from the loyal North.

The steps he took were all clearly unconstitutional, but they were necessary to save the Capital. They were the acts of a dictator, for Congress was not in session, but he dared to act. Troops were suddenly thrown into the city of Baltimore and its streets and heights planted with cannon. The chief of police was arrested and imprisoned, the police board was suspended and the city brought under the rule of drumhead court-martial. The writ of habeas corpus was suspended by Federal authorities in a free and sovereign State whose Legislature had proclaimed its neutrality in the sectional conflict. Blank warrants were issued by military officers and the house of every suspect entered by force and searched. The mayor and his Council were arrested without warrant, held without trial, and imprisoned in a military fortress, and when the Legislature dared to protest, its members were arrested and its session closed by bayonets.

So thoroughly was this work done that within thirty days from the attack on the troops of New England, Maryland's Governor by proclamation called for four regiments of volunteers to assist the Washington Government in the proposed invasion of the South.

In like manner, with hand of steel within a velvet glove, Mr. Lincoln prevented the secession of Kentucky and Missouri. It was done with less violence, but it was done, and these rich and powerful States saved to the Union.

The swift and bloodless conquest of Maryland inspired the North with the most grotesque conception of the war and its outcome.

The British and French Governments had immediately recognized the Confederate States as belligerents under the terms of international law and closed their ports to the armed vessels of both contestants. Mr. Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State, hastened to assure the nations of Europe that a dissolution of the Union was an absurd impossibility. It had never entered the mind of any candid statesman in America and should be dismissed at once by statesmen in Europe. And yet at this time eleven Southern States, stretching from the James to the Rio Grande, with a population of eight millions, had by solemn act of their Legislatures withdrawn from the Union and their armies were camping within a few miles of the City of Washington.

In all the North not a single statesman or a single newspaper appeared to have any conception of the serious task before them. The fusillades of rant, passion and bombast which filled the air would have been comic but for the grim tragedy which was stalking in their wake.

The "Rebellion" was ridiculed and sneered at in terms that taxed the genius of the writers for words of contempt.

The New York Tribune, the greatest and most powerful organ of public opinion in the North, a paper which had boldly from the first proclaimed the right of the South to peaceable secession, was now swept away with the popular fury.

Its editor gravely declared:

"The Southern rebellion is nothing more or less than the natural recourse of all mean-spirited and defeated tyrannies to rule or ruin, making of course a wide distinction between the will and the power, for the hanging of traitors is soon to begin before a month is over. The Nations of Europe may rest assured that Jeff Davis and Co. will be swinging from the battlements at Washington, at least by the fourth of July. We spit upon a later and longer deferred justice."

The New York Times gave its opinion with equal clearness:

"Let us make quick work. The Rebellion is an unborn tadpole. Let us not fall into the delusion of mistaking a local commotion for a revolution. A strong active pull together will do our work in thirty days. We have only to send a column of twenty-five thousand men across the Potomac to Richmond to burn out the rats there; another column of twenty-five thousand to Cairo to seize the Cotton ports of the Mississippi and retain the remaining twenty-five thousand called for by the President at Washington—not because there is any need for them there but because we do not require their services elsewhere."

The staid old Philadelphia Press declared:

"No man of sense can for a moment doubt that all this much-ado-about-nothing will end in a month. The Northern people are invincible. The rebels are a band of ragamuffins who will fly like chaff before the wind on our approach."

The West vied with the East in boastful clamor.

The Chicago Tribune shouted from the top of its columns:

"We insist that the West be allowed the honor of settling this little trouble by herself since she is most interested in its suppression to insure the free navigation of the Mississippi River. Let the East stand aside. This is our war. We can end it successfully in two months. Illinois can whip the whole South by herself. We insist on the affair being turned over to us."

With prospects of a short war and cheaply earned glory the rage for volunteering was resistless. The war for three months was to be a holiday excursion and every man would return a hero crowned with garlands of flowers, the center of admiring thousands. The blacksmiths of Brooklyn were busy making handcuffs for one of her crack regiments. Each volunteer had sworn to lead at least one captive rebel in chains through the crowded streets in the great parade on their return.

Socola on his arrival at Montgomery from Charleston read these fulminations from the North with amazement and rage. He sent his bitter and emphatic protest against such madness to Holt. The faithful Joseph had been rewarded with an office to his liking. He was now the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army. He turned Socola's letters over to Cameron, the new Secretary of War, who read them with rising wrath.

"The author of those letters," he said with a scowl, "is either a damned fool, or traitor."

Holt's lower lip was thrust out and the lines of his big mouth drawn into a knot.

"I assure you, sir—he is neither. He is absolutely loyal. His patriotism is a religion. He has entered his dangerous and important mission with the zeal of a religious fanatic."

"That accounts for it then—he's insane. I don't care to read any more such twaddle and I won't pay for the services of such a man out of the funds of the War Department."

With the utmost difficulty Holt secured the consent of the Secretary of War to continue Socola's commission for two months longer.

The only consolation the young patriot found in the contemptuous reply his Government made to his solemn warnings was the almost equal fatuity with which the Southern people were now approaching their first test of battle.

Until the proclamation of President Lincoln, both Jefferson Davis and the South had believed in the possibility of a peaceful reconciliation. Even when the proclamation had been made and the wild response of the North had been instantly given, the Southern people refused to believe that the millions of Northern voters who still clung to the old forms of Constitutional Government under the leadership of Stephen A. Douglas would surrender their principles, arm themselves and march to coerce a State at the command of a President against whom they had voted.

Senator Barton, from his new position in the Confederate Senate, scouted the idea of serious war.

"Bah!" he growled to Socola, who was drawing him out. "The Yankees won't fight!"

"That's what they say about you, sir," was the cool response.

"Who ever heard of a race of shopkeepers turning into soldiers?" The Senator laughed. "Such men have no martial prowess! They are unequal to mighty deeds of valor."

The white teeth of the young observer gleamed in a smile.

"On the other hand, Senator, I'm afraid history proves that commercial communities, once aroused, are the most dogged, pugnacious, ambitious and obstinate fighters of the world—Carthage, Venice, Genoa, Holland and England have surely proven this—"

"There's one thing certain," Barton roared. "We'll bring England to her knees if there is a war. Cotton is the King of Commerce, and we hold the key of his empire. The population of England will starve without our cotton. If we need them they've got to come to our rescue, sir!"

Socola did not argue the point. It was amazing how widespread was this idea in the South. He wrote his Government again and again that the whole movement of secession was based on this conception.

There was one man in Washington who read these warnings with keen insight—Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy. The part this quiet, unassuming man was preparing to play in the mighty drama then unfolding its first scene was little known or understood by those who were filling the world with the noise of their bluster.

Jefferson Davis at his desk in Montgomery saw with growing anxiety the confidence of his people in immediate and overwhelming success. In answer to Abraham Lincoln's proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteers to fight the South, he called for 100,000 to defend it. The rage for volunteering in the South was even greater than the North. An army of five hundred thousand men could have been enrolled for any length of service if arms and equipment could have been found. It was utterly impossible to arm and equip one hundred thousand, before the first battle would be fought.

Ambitious Southern boys, raging for the smell of battle, rushed from post to post, begged and pleaded for a place in the ranks. They offered big bounties for the places assigned to men who were lucky enough to be accepted.

The Confederate Congress, to the chagrin of their President, fixed the time of service at six months. Jefferson Davis was apparently the only man in the South who had any conception of the gigantic task before his infant government. He begged and implored his Congress for an enrollment of three years or the end of the war. The Congress laughed at his absurd fears. The utmost they would grant was enlistment for the term of one year.

With grim foreboding but desperate earnestness the President of the Confederacy turned his attention to the organization and equipment of this force with which he was expected to defend the homes of eight million people scattered over a territory of 728,000 square miles, with an open frontier of a thousand miles and three thousand leagues of open sea.



CHAPTER XIV

RICHMOND IN GALA DRESS

From the moment Virginia seceded from the Union it wan a foregone conclusion that Richmond would be the capital of the new Confederacy—not only because the great Virginian was the Father of the Country and his glorious old Commonwealth the mother of States and Presidents, but because her soil must be the arena of the first great battle.

On May 23, the Provisional Congress at Montgomery adjourned to meet in Richmond on July 20, and Jefferson Davis began his triumphal procession to the new Capital.

Jennie Barton, her impulsive father, the Senator, Mrs Barton, with temper serene and unruffled, and Signor Henrico Socola of the Sardinian Ministry, were in the party. Dick Welford and two boys were already in Virginia with their regiments. Tom was in New Orleans with Raphael Semmes, fitting out the little steamer Sumter for a Confederate cruiser.

Senator Barton had been requested by the new President to act as his aide, and the champion of secession had accepted the honor under protest. It was not of importance commensurate with his abilities, but it was perhaps worth while for the moment until a greater field was opened.

The arrangement made Socola's association with Jennie of double importance. As the train whirled through the sunlit fields of the South he found his position by her side more and more agreeable and interesting. She was a girl of remarkable intelligence. He had observed that she was not afraid of silence. Her tongue was not forever going. In fact she seemed disinclined to talk unless she had something to say.

He glanced at her from the corners of his dark eyes with a friendly smile.

"You are serious to-day, Miss Jennie?"

"Yes. I wish I were a man!"

"You'd go to the front, of course?"

"Yes—wouldn't you?"

"For my country—yes—"

He paused a moment and went on carelessly:

"Your older brother, the Judge, will fight for the Union?"

The sensitive lips trembled.

"No—thank God. He has sent my mother word that for her sake and mine he'll not fight his father and younger brothers in battle. He's going to do a braver thing than march to the front. He's going to face his neighbors in New Orleans and stand squarely by his principles."

"It will take a brave man to do that, won't it?"

"The bravest of the brave."

The train was just pulling into a sleepy Southern town, the tracks running straight down the center of its main street. A company was drawn up to salute the new President and cheering thousands had poured in from the surrounding country to do him honor. They cheered themselves hoarse and were still at it when the train slowly started northward. The company which greeted their arrival with arms presented were on board now, chatting, shouting, singing, waving their caps and handkerchiefs to tear-stained women.

The country through which the Presidential party passed had been suddenly transformed into a vast military camp, the whole population war mad.

Every woman from every window of every house in sight of the train waved a handkerchief. The flutter of those white flags never ceased.

The city of Richmond gave their distinguished visitor a noble reception. He was quartered temporarily at the Spotswood Hotel, but the City Council had purchased the handsomest mansion in town at a cost of $40,000 and offered it to him as their token of admiration of his genius.

Mr. Davis was deeply touched by this mark of esteem from Virginia, but sternly refused the gift for himself. He accepted it for the Confederate Government as the official residence of the President.

Socola found the city a mere comfortable village in comparison with New York or Boston or Philadelphia, though five times the size of Montgomery. He strolled through its streets alone, wondering in which one of the big old-fashioned mansions lived the remarkable Southern woman to whom his Government had referred him for orders. He must await the arrival of the messenger who would deliver to him in person its description. In the meantime with tireless eye he was studying the physical formation of every street and alley. He must know it, every crook and turn.

Until the advent of the troops Richmond had been one of the quietest of all the smaller cities of America. Barely forty thousand inhabitants, one third of whom were negro slaves, it could boast none of the displays or excitements of a metropolis. Its vices were few, its life orderly and its society the finest type of the genuine American our country had developed.

Rowdyism was unknown. The police department consisted of a dozen "watchmen" whose chief duty was to round up a few straggling negroes who might be found on the streets after nine o'clock at night and put them in "the Cage" until morning. "The Cage" was a ramshackled wooden building too absurd to be honored by the name of prison.

The quiet, shady streets were suddenly transformed into the throbbing, tumultuous avenues of a crowded Capital—already numbering more than one hundred thousand inhabitants.

Its pulse beat with a new and fevered life. Its atmosphere was tense with the electric rumble of the coming storm—everywhere bustle, hurry and feverish preparations for war. The Tredegar Iron Works had doubled its force of men. Day and night the red glare of the furnaces threw its sinister glow over the yellow, turbulent waters of the James. With every throb now of its red heart a cannon was born destined to slay a thousand men.

Every hill was white with the tents of soldiers, their camps stretching away into the distant fields and forests.

Every street was thronged. Couriers on blooded horses dashed to and fro bearing the messages of imperious masters. From every direction came the crash of military bands. And over all the steady, low rumble of artillery and the throbbing tramp of soldiers. In every field and wood for miles around the city could be heard the neighing of horses, the bugle call of the trooper, the shouts of gay recruits and the sharp command of drilling officers.

The rattle of the ambulance and the long, red trenches of the uncoffined dead had not come yet. They were not even dreamed in the hearts of the eager, rollicking, fun-loving children of the South.

There were as yet no dances, no social festivities. The town was soldier mad. Few men not in uniform were to be seen on the streets. A man in citizen's clothes was under suspicion as to his principles.

With each train, new companies and regiments arrived. Day and night the tramp of soldiers' feet, the throb of drum, the scream of fife, the gleam of bayonets.

Everywhere soldiers were welcomed, feted, lionized. The finest ladies of Richmond vied with one another in serving their soldier guests. Society turned out en masse to every important review.

Southern society was melted into a single pulsing thought—the fight in defense of their homes and their liberty. In the white heat of this mighty impulse the barriers of class and sex were melted.

The most delicately reared and cultured lady of society admitted without question the right of any man who wore a gray uniform to speak to her without introduction and escort her anywhere on the streets. In not a single instance was this high privilege abused by an insult, indignity or an improper word.

Socola saw but one lady who showed the slightest displeasure.

A dainty little woman of eight, delicately trained in the ways of polite society, was shocked at the familiarity of a soldier who had dared to caress her.

She turned to her elderly companion and gasped with indignation:

"Auntie! Did you ever! Any man who wears a stripe on his pantaloons now thinks he can speak to a lady!"

Socola laughed and passed on to inspect the camp of the famous Hampton Legion of South Carolina.

His heart went out in a sudden wave of admiration for these Southern people who could merge thus their souls and bodies into the cause of their country.

The Hampton Legion was recruited, armed and equipped and led by Wade Hampton. Its private soldiers were the flower of South Carolina's society. The dress parades of this regiment of gentlemen were the admiration of the town. The carriages that hung around their maneuvers were as gay and numerous as the assemblage on a fashionable race course. Each member of this famous legion went into Richmond with his trunks and body servant. They, too, were confident of a brief struggle.

A kind fate held fast the dark curtains of the future. The camp was a picnic ground, and Death was only a specter of the dim unknown.

Just as Socola strolled by the grounds, the camp spied the handsome figure of young Preston Hampton in a pair of spotless yellow kid gloves. They caught and rolled him in the dust and spoiled his gloves.

He laughed and took it good naturedly.

The hardier sons of the South held the attention of the keen, observing eyes with stronger interest. He knew what would become of those trunks and fine clothes. The thing he wished most to know was the quality and the temper of the average man in the Southern ranks.

Socola met Dick Welford suddenly face to face, smiled and bowed. Dick hesitated, returned his recognition and offered his hand.

"Mr. Welford—"

"Signor Socola."

Dick's greeting was a little awkward, but the older man put him at once at ease with his frank, friendly manners.

"A brave show your Champ de Mars, sir!"

"Does look like business, doesn't it?" Dick responded with pride. "Would you like to go through the camps and see our men?"

"Very much."

"Come, I'll show you."

Two hundred yards from the camp of the Hampton Legion they found the Louisiana Zouaves of Wheat's command, small, tough-looking men with gleaming black eyes.

"Frenchmen!" Dick sneered. "They'll fight though—"

"Their people in the old world have that reputation," Socola dryly remarked.

Beyond them lay a regiment of fierce, be-whiskered countrymen from the lower sections of Mississippi.

"Look out for those fellows," the young Southerner said serenely. "They're from old Jeff's home. You'll hear from them. Their fathers all fought in Mexico."

Socola nodded.

Beside the Mississippians lay a regiment of long-legged, sinewy riflemen from Arkansas.

A hundred yards further they saw the quaint coon-skin caps of John B. Gordon's company from Georgia.

Socola watched these lanky mountaineers with keen interest.

"The Raccoon Roughs," Dick explained. "First company of Georgia volunteers. They had to march over two or three States before anybody would muster them in. They're happy as June bugs now."

They passed two regiments of quiet North Carolinians. The young Northerner observed their strong, muscular bodies and earnest faces.

"And these two large regiments, Mr. Welford?" Socola asked.

"Oh," the Virginian exclaimed with a careless touch of scorn in his voice, "they're Tarheels—not much for looks, but I reckon they'll stick."

"I've an idea they will," was the serious reply.

Dick pointed with pride to a fine-looking regiment of Virginians.

"Good-looking soldiers," Socola observed.

"Aren't they? That's my regiment. You'll hear from them in the first battle."

"And those giants?" Socola inquired, pointing to the right at a group of tall, rude-looking fellows.

"Texas Rangers."

"I shouldn't care to meet them in a row—"

"You know what General Taylor said of them in the Mexican War?"

"No—"

"They're anything but gentlemen or cowards."

"I agree with him," Socola laughed.

"What chance has a Yankee got against such men?" Dick asked with a wag of his big blond head.

"Let me show you what they think—"

Socola drew a leaf of Harper's Magazine from his pocket and spread it before the young trooper's indignant gaze.

The cartoon showed a sickly-looking Southerner carrying his musket under an umbrella accompanied by a negro with a tray full of mint juleps.

"That's a joke, isn't it!" Dick roared. "Will you give me this paper?"

"Certainly, Monsieur!"

Dick folded the sheet, still laughing. "I'll have some fun with this in camp to-night. Come on—I want to show you just one more bunch of these sickly-looking mint-julipers—"

Again the Southerner roared.

They quickened their pace and in a few minutes were passing through the camps of the Red River men from Arkansas and Northern Louisiana.

"Aren't you sorry for these poor fellows?" Dick laughed.

"I have never seen anything like them," Socola admitted, looking on their stalwart forms with undisguised admiration. Scarcely a man was under six feet in height, with broad, massive shoulders and chests and not an ounce of superfluous flesh. Their resemblance to each other was remarkable. Nature had cast each one in the same heroic mold. The spread of giant unbroken forests spoke in their brawny arms and legs. The look of an eagle soaring over great rivers and fertile plains flashed in their fearless eyes.

"What do you think of them?" Dick asked with boyish pride.

"I'd like to send their photographs to Harper's—"

"For God's sake, don't do that!" Dick protested. "If you do, we'll never get a chance to see a Yankee. I want to get in sight of 'em anyhow before they run. All I ask of the Lord is to give me one whack at those little, hump-backed, bow-legged shoemakers from Boston!"

Socola smiled dryly.

"In five minutes after we meet—there won't be a shoe-string left fit to use."

The dark face flashed with a strange light from the depths of the somber eyes—only for an instant did he lose self-control. His voice was velvet when he spoke.

"Your faith is strong, M'sieur!"

"It's not faith—we know. One Southerner can whip three Yankees any day."

"But suppose it should turn out that he had to whip five or six or a dozen?"

"Don't you think these fellows could do it?"

Socola hesitated. It was a shame to pull down a faith that could remove mountains. He shrugged his slender shoulders and a pensive look stole over his face. He seemed to be talking to himself.