Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, vol 1 (April 1861-November 1863) | Page 7

State House park, trying in vain to get more than a dim outline of the
man as he stood at the unlighted window. His deep sonorous voice
rolled down through the darkness from above us,--an earnest, measured
voice, the more solemn, the more impressive, because we could not see
the speaker, and it came to us literally as "a voice in the night,"--the
night of our country's unspeakable trial. 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. Among
the painful remembrances of those days is the ever-present weight at
the heart which never left me till I found relief in the active duties of
camp life at the close of the month. I went about my duties (and I am
sure most of those I associated with did the same) with the half-choking
sense of a grief I dared not think of: like one who is dragging himself to
the ordinary labors of life from some terrible and recent bereavement.
We talked of our personal duty, and though both Garfield and myself
had young families, we were agreed that our activity in the organization
and support of the Republican party made the duty of supporting the
government by military service come peculiarly home to us. He was,
for the moment, somewhat trammelled by his half-clerical position, but
he very soon cut the knot. My own path seemed unmistakably clear. He,
more careful for his friend than for himself, urged upon me his doubts
whether my physical strength was equal to the strain that would be put
upon it. "I," said he, "am big and strong, and if my relations to the

church and the college can be broken, I shall have no excuse for not
enlisting; but you are slender and will break down." It was true that I
looked slender for a man six feet high (though it would hardly be
suspected now that it was so), yet I had assured confidence in the
elasticity of my constitution; and the result justified me, whilst it also
showed how liable to mistake one is in such things. Garfield found that
he had a tendency to weakness of the alimentary system which broke
him down on every campaign in which he served and led to his retiring
from the army much earlier than he had intended. My own health, on
the other hand, was strengthened by out-door life and exposure, and I
served to the end with growing physical vigor.
When Mr. Lincoln issued his first call for troops, the existing laws
made it necessary that these should be fully organized and officered by
the several States. Then, the treasury was in no condition to bear the
burden of war expenditures, and till Congress could assemble, the
President was forced to rely on the States to furnish the means
necessary for the equipment and transportation of their own troops.
This threw upon the governors and legislatures of the loyal States
responsibilities of a kind wholly unprecedented. A long period of
profound peace had made every military organization seem almost
farcical. A few independent military companies formed the merest
shadow of an army; the state militia proper was only a nominal thing. It
happened, however, that I held a commission as Brigadier in this state
militia, and my intimacy with Governor Dennison led him to call upon
me for such