A Youth's History of the Great Civil War
Van Evrie, Horton & Co., ©1866
Revised edition, ©2006 www.ronie-mooney-encs.us
The views expressed in the following document do not necessarily represent the views of www.ronie-mooney-encs.us. This document, originally published in 1866, has been provided to the public based solely on its potential value as a historical document.
CHAPTER XV, THE RUSH OF TROOPS TO WASHINGTON
I have said that Massachusetts began to prepare for war before the election of Mr.Lincoln. Governor Andrew of that State boasted of the fact himself. So the troops of Massachusetts were the very first to jump into uniform at the call of the President. They were passing through the streets of New York, on the way to Washington, even before the President's proclamation had been generally read. They did not march through the streets of New York City, so much as they skipped, and hopped, and jumped. They came on screaming and yelling like Indians, and went through the city, singing "John Brown's soul is marching on!"
Alas, it was too true that John Brown's soul was marching on. For it was just that and nothing more. It was to "finish the work of the martyr, old John Brown," which they declared they were going to do. John Brown's own raid was one which appeared to be pretty much on his own hook; but now we were to witness something of a similar kind on a grander scale, and carried on by a Federal Administration, at the expense of the people of the United States.
These Massachusetts soldiers, rushing on so hot and clamorous towards the scene of bloodshed, were a sad sight for any good man or true patriot to witness. They were the representatives of the very traitors and fanatics who, only a few years before, had publicly burned the Constitution of the United States in Boston, on the Fourth of July. They came from a State which for a quarter of a century had supported a newspaper which flaunted the motto that, "The Union is an agreement with hell, and the Constitution a covenant with death. The leaders of the party in Massachusetts from which these armed Puritans came out, had cunningly instructed them to say that they were going to "fight for the Union." That was the cry they were told to keep up on the way; but in th;e gushing passion of their hearts they everywhere sung out their real mission, to "revenge the martyr, old John Brown!"
A majority of these wild soldiers of Massachusetts comprehended nothing higher than that. The leaders and politicians, whom they had left in safety at home, cared nothing for old John Brown, except so far as his name was useful to them in pumping up the bitter waters of a strife which was to end in the overthrow of the democratic principles of our Government.
A merchant of Boston, a man of prominence in his State, said to the writer of this history during the second year of the war: "This war will put an end to democracy, and that alone will be worth all the blood which is shed." Alas, that so many democrats should have ren blindly into their trap.
As these Massachusetts soldiers went on, dancing and singing, a great excitement was aroused, and applause greeted them at almost every point along the route, until they reached the city of Baltimore. In that city the march of the first installment of the abolition army was met with the resistance of what appeared to be the whole people. The railroad track was barricaded so effectually as to entirely prevent the passage of the cars, and every street and avenue was blocked up by thousands of people, armed with stones and clubs, to resist the advance of the soldiers. The soldiers fired indiscriminately into the dense crowd of men, women and children, which produced a scene that was frightful to look upon, in which a number of citizens and soldiers were killed.
For several weeks no more soldiers were allowed to pass through Baltimore. The railroad bridges in the vicinity of the city were all destroyed, so that all the abolition troops were obliged to go round through Annapolis on the route to Washington.
The war so long looked for, so long prayed for, by the abolitionists, was now begun in earnest. On the 19th of April Mr.Lincoln put forth another proclamation to declare all the ports of the South blockaded.
The new Confederate Government now formally recognized the existence of war, and commenced in great earnest to prepare for the worst. Virginia, which had so long tried in vain to induce the Black Republicans of Congress and Mr.Lincoln to accept the fair terms of compromise and peace offered by the South, in the Crittenden resolutions, was now already swarming with hostile abolition soldiers. At that time Gen. Robert E.Lee was a colonel of cavalry in the United States army, but when he saw his native State invaded, he resigned his commission, and at once assumed command of the State forces of Virginia. A large force of Mr.Lincoln's troops held Harper's Ferry in Virginia, but were compelled to evacuate it in consequence of the general rising of the Virginians to defend their own homes. Before leaving, however, they set fire to all the buildings, machine shops, and other public structures. This took place on the 19th of April.
The next day Mr.Lincoln's soldiers were ordered to use the torch in another part of Virginia. All the works of the Norfolk Navy Yard were fired, producing such a conflagration that the city of Norfolk was with the greatest difficulty saved from the devouring flames. All the ships, except one, in the harbor, were fired and scuttled. The sword and the faggot were now fairly launched upon their long and terrible errand of destruction. The awful fact stared the whole South in the face, that the only hope of protection against the objects of the Black Republican party lay in its means of self-defence. A tremendous army was gathering at Washington. The Black Republican members of Congress, and the papers of that party, breathed only threats of appalling slaughter. They were going "to leave the ruts of their war-chariots so deep in the soil of the South, that eternity would not wear them out." That was the kind of language they habitually used.
At that moment the despotic designs of the Lincoln Administration were fully revealed in events passing in Maryland. That State, while it passed resolutions against the invasion of sovereign States by Federal troops, took no steps to secede. Indeed the State Legislature passed a resolution against calling a convention to discuss the propriety of seceding. But this was no protection against the despotism agreed upon in the Black Republican councils at Washington. The mayor and police of Baltimore were seized and plunged into a military prison, where they were treated with a barbarity truly revolting. They were not allowed the privileges which always in civilized countries are permitted to convicted murderers.
The constitution, laws, and courts of the State were all stricken down by a single blow. The State Legislature was dispersed at the point of the bayonet, and its members spirited away to distant dungeons. Private houses were searched by the officials of the usurpers at Washington. Private letters of ladies and gentlemen were seized and sent to Washington to be read by Mr.Seward and Mr.Lincoln as they sat upon their new throne of usurped authority. Men were thrown into dungeons on the suspicion of having "sympathies" in opposition to Black Republicans. Any debased wretch could easily procure the arrest of a gentleman or lady against whom he had a spite. And when the venerable Chief Justice of the United States issued the writ of habeas corpus to bring these victims out to ascertain the cause of their arrest, Mr.Lincoln telegraphed to his military tools to pay no respect to the orders of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States!
So you see that the party had at last come fully into power, which tried to establish a government of monarchical powers after our Revolution. You have also seen, in previous chapters of this history, that the same monarchist party attempted to revolutionize or overthrow the free government our fathers did establish, while it was in power from 1796 to 1800, under the Administration of old John Adams. This party, so long hating, so long opposing the free democratic government of our country, found in Abraham Lincoln a willing tool of its revolutionary and despotic principles.
His official newspaper in Washington, edited by a man of the most infamous political reputation, by the name of Forney, did not scruple to confess that the plan of revolutionizing our Government had been fully determined upon, and in a leading editorial he said: "Another principle must certainly be embodied in our re-organized form of government. The men who shape the legislation of this country, when the war is past, must remember that what we want is power and strength. The problem will be to combine the forms of a republican government with the powers of a monarchical government." Here we find Mr.Lincoln's own organ confessing that they had fully entered upon the business of changing the free government of our fathers into a government possessing the power of a monarchy!
At the same time another leading Black Republican paper, the North American of Philadelphia, said: "This war has already shown the absurdity of a government of limited powers; it has shown that the power of every government ought to be and must be unlimited."
Did ever the Emperor of Austria talk in language more contemptuous of a republican form of government, or more laudatory of monarchical power? So you see that not only the acts of Mr.Lincoln, but the tone and language of the leaders of his party, were all in harmony with the idea of despotic power. Under the cunning but hypocritical cry for the Union, these traitors were aiming, not only at the eternal overthrow of the Union, but at the destruction of the free system of government established by the patriots of the Revolution.
Return to History of the Great Civil War
RELATED ARTICLES
Biography of Abraham Lincoln
Biography of Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States (1861-1865).
Confederate States of America - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shortly before the end of the war, the Confederate government evacuated Richmond ... During its existence, the Confederate government conducted negotiations ...
Habeas corpus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Then, as now, the writ of habeas corpus was issued by a superior court in the name ... In the USA, the writ of habeas corpus ad...
Harpers Ferry, West Virginia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Harpers Ferry
Harpers Ferry, West Virginia 1865. Harpers Ferry is a town in Jefferson County, West Virginia, situated on the banks of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers ...
Blacks in the Civil War,In 1863
John Andrew, the War Govenor of Massachusetts, made a request to the secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, to create a volunteer regiment of African ...
Norfolk Naval Shipyard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Norfolk Naval Shipyard, often called the Norfolk Navy Yard, is a US Navy facility in ... the shipyard commander ordered the burning of the shipyard. ...
The Crittenden Compromise
The Crittenden Compromise was one of several last-ditch efforts to resolve the ... Authored by Kentucky Senator John Crittenden (whose two sons would become ...
