the best lesson of the century, or of America, and it is a mighty
privilege to have been part of it. (Two great spectacles, immortal
proofs of democracy, unequall'd in all the history of the past, are
furnish'd by the secession war--one at the beginning, the other at
its close. Those are, the general, voluntary, arm'd upheaval, and the
peaceful and harmonious disbanding of the armies in the summer of
1865.)


CONTEMPTUOUS FEELING

Even after the bombardment of Sumter, however, the gravity of the
revolt, and the power and will of the slave States for a strong and
continued military resistance to national authority, were not at all
realized at the North, except by a few. 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