SOURCES OF CHARACTER--RESULTS--1860

To sum up the foregoing from the outset (and, of course, far, far more
unrecorded,) I estimate three leading sources and formative stamps to
my own character, now solidified for good or bad, and its subsequent
literary and other outgrowth--the maternal nativity-stock brought
hither from far-away Netherlands, for one, (doubtless the best)--the
subterranean tenacity and central bony structure (obstinacy,
wilfulness) which I get from my paternal English elements, for
another--and the combination of my Long Island birth-spot, sea-shores,
childhood's scenes, absorptions, with teeming Brooklyn and New York
--with, I suppose, my experiences afterward in the secession outbreak,
for the third.

For, in 1862, startled by news that my brother George, an officer
in the 51st New York volunteers, had been seriously wounded (first
Fredericksburg battle, December 13th,) I hurriedly went down to the
field of war in Virginia. But I must go back a little.


OPENING OF THE SECESSION WAR

News of the attack on fort Sumter and _the flag_ at Charleston harbor,
S. C., was receiv'd in New York city late at night (13th April, 1861,)
and was immediately sent out in extras of the newspapers. I had
been to the opera in Fourteenth street that night, and after the
performance was walking down Broadway toward twelve o'clock, on my
way to Brooklyn, when I heard in the distance the loud cries of the
newsboys, who came presently tearing and yelling up the street,
rushing from side to side even more furiously than usual. I bought an