us. The dream of humanity, the vaunted Union we thought so strong,
so impregnable--lo! it seems already smash'd like a china plate. One
bitter, bitter hour--perhaps proud America will never again know
such an hour. She must pack and fly--no time to spare. Those white
palaces--the dome-crown'd capitol there on the hill, so stately over
the trees--shall they be left--or destroy'd first? For it is certain
that the talk among certain of the magnates and officers and clerks
and officials everywhere, for twenty-four hours in and around
Washington after Bull Run, was loud and undisguised for yielding out
and out, and substituting the southern rule, and Lincoln promptly
abdicating and departing. If the secesh officers and forces had
immediately follow'd, and by a bold Napoleonic movement had enter'd
Washington the first day, (or even the second,) they could have had
things their own way, and a powerful faction north to back them. One
of our returning colonels express'd in public that night, amid a swarm
of officers and gentlemen in a crowded room, the opinion that it was
useless to fight, that the southerners had made their title clear,
and that the best course for the national government to pursue was to
desist from any further attempt at stopping them, and admit them again
to the lead, on the best terms they were willing to grant. Not a voice
was rais'd against this judgment, amid that large crowd of officers
and gentlemen. (The fact is, the hour was one of the three or four of
those crises we had then and afterward, during the fluctuations of
four years, when human eyes appear'd at least just as likely to see
the last breath of the Union as to see it continue.)


THE STUPOR PASSES--SOMETHING ELSE BEGINS

But the hour, the day, the night pass'd, and whatever returns, an