There was no uncertainty in his
tone: the Union must be preserved and the insurrection must be
crushed,--he pledged his hearty support to Mr. Lincoln's
administration in doing this. Other questions must stand aside till
the national authority should be everywhere recognized. I do not
think we greatly cheered him,--it was rather a deep Amen that went
up from the crowd. We went home breathing freer in the assurance we
now felt that, for a time at least, no organized opposition to the
federal government and its policy of coercion would be formidable in
the North. We did not look for unanimity. Bitter and narrow men
there were whose sympathies were with their country's enemies.
Others equally narrow were still in the chains of the secession
logic they had learned from the Calhounists; but the broader-minded
men found themselves happy in being free from disloyal theories, and
threw themselves sincerely and earnestly into the popular movement.
There was no more doubt where Douglas or Tod or Key would be found,
or any of the great class they represented.
Yet the situation hung upon us like a nightmare. Garfield and I were
lodging together at the time, our wives being kept at home by family
cares, and when we reached our sitting-room, after an evening
session of the Senate, we often found ourselves involuntarily
groaning, "Civil war in _our_ land!" The shame, the outrage, the
folly, seemed too great to believe, and we half hoped to wake from
it as from a dream.
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