1862.]

A DISAPPOINTED VIRGINIAN.

309

thousand camp-fires; and, from the proscenium-hill of General Howard's head-quarters, forms a picture mocking all earthly canvas. Behind the Rebel batteries, in the dense forest, their infantry occupies a line five miles long. By night we just detect the glimmer of their fires; by day we see the tall, slender columns of smoke curling up from their camps.

All the citizens ask to have guards placed over their houses; but very few obtain them. "I will give no man a guard," replied General Howard to one of these applicants, "until he is willing to lose as much as I have lost, in defending the Government." The Virginian cast one long, lingering look at the General's loose, empty coat-sleeve (he lost his right arm while leading his brigade at Fair Oaks), and went away, the picture of despair.

ARMY OF POTOMAC, Sunday, Dec. 21.

The general tone of the army is good; far better than could be expected. There is regret for our failure, sympathy for our wounded, mourning for our honored dead; but I find little discouragement and no demoral

ization.

This is largely owing to the splendid conduct of all our troops. The men are hopeful because there are few of the usual jealousies and heart-burnings. No one is able to say, "If this division had not broken," or "if that regiment had done its duty, we might have won." The concurrence of testimony is universal, that our men in every division did better than they ever did before, and made good their claim to being the best troops in the world. We have had victories without merit, but this was a defeat without dishonor.

In many respects-in all respects but the failure of

310

HONOR TO THE BRAVE AND BOLD.

[1862.

its vital object-the battle of Fredericksburg was the finest thing of the war. Laying the bridge, pushing the army across, after the defeat withdrawing it successfully-all were splendidly done, and redound alike to the skill of the general and the heroism of the troops.

And those men and officers of the Seventh Michigan, the Nineteenth and Twentieth Massachusetts, and the Eighty-ninth New York, who eagerly crossed the river in open boats, in the teeth of that pitiless rain of bullets, and dislodged the sharpshooters who were holding our whole army at bay-what shall we say of them? Let the name of every man of them be secured now, and preserved in a roll of honor; let Congress see to it that, by medal or ribbon to each, the Republic gives token of gratitude to all who do such royal deeds in its defense. To the living, at least, we can be just. The fallen, who were left by hundreds in line of battle, "dead on the field of honor," we cannot reward; but He who permits no sparrow to fall to the ground unheeded, will see to it that no drop of their precious blood has been shed in vain.

THE assassination of President Lincoln, while these chapters are in press, attaches a sad interest to every thing connected with his memory.

During the great canvass for the United States Senate, between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas, the right of Congress to exclude Slavery from the Territories was the chief point in dispute. Kansas was the only region to which it had any practical application; and we, who were residing there, read the debates with peculiar interest.

No such war of intellects, on the rostrum, was ever witnessed in America. Entirely without general culture, more ignorant of books than any other public man of his day, Douglas was christened "the Little Giant" by the unerring popular instinct. He who, without the learning of the schools, and without preparation, could cope with Webster, Seward, and Sumner, surely deserved that appellation. He despised study. Rising after one of Mr. Sumner's most scholarly and elaborate speeches, he said: "Mr. President, this is very elegant and able, but we all know perfectly well that the Massachusetts Senator has been rehearsing it every night for a month, before a looking-glass, with a negro holding a candle!"

Douglas was, beyond all cotemporaries, a man of the

312

HIS GREAT CANVASS WITH DOUGLAS.

[1858.

people. Lincoln, too, was distinctively of the masses; but he represented their sober, second thought, their higher aspirations, their better possibilities. Douglas embodied their average impulses, both good and bad. Upon the stump, his fluency, his hard common sense, and his wonderful voice, which could thunder like the cataract, or whisper with the breeze, enabled him to sway them at his will.

Hitherto invincible at home, he now found a foeman worthy of his steel. All over the country people began to ask about this "Honest Abe Lincoln," whose inexhaustible anecdotes were so droll, yet so exactly to the point; whose logic was so irresistible; whose modesty, fairness, and personal integrity, won golden opinions from his political enemies; who, without "trimming," enjoyed the support of the many-headed Opposition in Illinois, from the Abolition Owen Lovejoys of the northern counties, down to the "conservative" old Whigs of the Egyptian districts, who still believed in the divinity of Slavery.

Those who did not witness it will never comprehend the universal and intense horror at every thing looking toward "negro equality" which then prevailed in southern Illinois. Republican politicians succumbed to it. In their journals and platforms they sometimes said distinctly: "We care nothing for the negro. We advocate his exclusion from our State. We We oppose Slavery in the Territories only because it is a curse to the white man." Mr. Lincoln never descended to this level. In his plain, moderate, conciliatory way, he would urge upon his simple auditors that this matter had a Right and a Wrong-that the great Declaration of their fathers meant something. And-always his strong point—he would put this so clearly to the com

1859.]

HIS VISIT TO KANSAS.

313

mon apprehension, and so touch the people's moral sense, that his opponents found their old cries of "Abolitionist" and "Negro-worshiper" hollow and powerless.

His defeat, by a very slight majority, proved victory in disguise. The debates gave him a National reputation. Republican executive committees in other States issued verbatim reports of the speeches of both Douglas and Lincoln, bound up together in the order of their delivery. They printed them just as they stood, without one word of comment, as the most convincing plea for their cause. Rarely, if ever, has any man received so high a compliment as was thus paid to Mr. Lincoln.

In Kansas his stories began to stick like chestnut-burrs in the popular ear-to pass from mouth to mouth, and from cabin to cabin. The young lawyers, physicians, and other politicians who swarm in the new country, began to quote from his arguments in their public speeches, and to regard him as the special champion of their political faith.

Late in the Autumn of 1859 he visited the Territory for the first and last time. With Marcus J. Parrott, Delegate in Congress, A. Carter Wilder, afterward Representative, and Henry Villard, a Journalist, I went to Troy, in Doniphan County, to hear him. In the imaginative language of the frontier, Troy was a "town"-possibly a city. But, save a shabby frame court-house, a tavern, and a few shanties, its urban glories were visible only to the eye of faith. It was intensely cold. The sweeping prairie wind rocked the crazy buildings, and cut the faces of travelers like a knife. Mr. Wilder froze his hand during our ride, and Mr. Lincoln's party arrived wrapped in buffalo-robes.

Not more than forty people assembled in that little, bare-walled court-house. There was none of the mag