and the Governor's acceptance of them. The prompt and continuous work
incident to the enlistment of the men, the bustle of preparation,
and all the scenes of that time, come before me now. It turned
the calm current of the life of an old and placid country neighborhood,
far from any city or centre, and stirred it into a boiling torrent,
strong enough, or fierce enough to cut its way and join the general torrent
which was bearing down and sweeping everything before it.
It seemed but a minute before the quiet old plantation, in which the harvest,
the corn-shucking, and the Christmas holidays alone marked the passage
of the quiet seasons, and where a strange carriage or a single horseman
coming down the big road was an event in life, was turned into
a depot of war-supplies, and the neighborhood became a parade-ground.
The old Colonel, not a colonel yet, nor even a captain, except by brevet,
was on his horse by daybreak and off on his rounds through the plantations
and the pines enlisting his company. The office in the yard, heretofore one
in name only, became one now in reality, and a table was set out
piled with papers, pens, ink, books of tactics and regulation, at which men
were accepted and enrolled. Soldiers seemed to spring from the ground,
as they did from the sowing of the dragon's teeth in the days of Cadmus.
Men came up the high road or down the paths across the fields,
sometimes singly, but oftener in little parties of two or three,
and, asking for the Captain, entered the office as private citizens
and came out soldiers enlisted for the war. There was nothing heard of
on the plantation except fighting; white and black, all were at work,
and all were eager; the servants contended for the honor of going
with their master; the women flocked to the house to assist in the work
of preparation, cutting out and making under-clothes, knitting socks,
picking lint, preparing bandages, and sewing on uniforms;
for many of the men who had enlisted were of the poorest class,
far too poor to furnish anything themselves, and their equipment