Nine-tenths of the people
of the free States look'd upon the rebellion, as started in South
Carolina, from a feeling one-half of contempt, and the other half
composed of anger and incredulity. It was not thought it would be
join'd in by Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia. A great and
cautious national official predicted that it would blow over "in sixty
days," and folks generally believ'd the prediction. I remember talking
about it on a Fulton ferry-boat with the Brooklyn mayor, who said he
only "hoped the Southern fire-eaters would commit some overt act of
resistance, as they would then be at once so effectually squelch'd,
we would never hear of secession again--but he was afraid they never
would have the pluck to really do anything."
I remember, too, that a couple of companies of the Thirteenth
Brooklyn, who rendezvou'd at the city armory, and started thence as
thirty days' men, were all provided with pieces of rope, conspicuously
tied to their musket-barrels, with which to bring back each man a
prisoner from the audacious South, to be led in a noose, on our men's
early and triumphant return!
BATTLE OF BULL RUN, JULY, 1861
All this sort of feeling was destin'd to be arrested and revers'd by
a terrible shock--the battle of first Bull Run--certainly, as we now
know it, one of the most singular fights on record. (All battles, and
their results, are far more matters of accident than is generally
thought; but this was throughout a casualty, a chance.
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