Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 1.
Frank Moore, Ed.

Party lines grew faint and vanished as though they had never existed. Washington has been described as leaning in the darkest hour of the revolution, with one arm resting on Massachusetts, and the other on South Carolina. The faithlessness of the latter to her historic memories, prevents the parallel being now complete; but we may say of Lincoln what can be said of no other President since Washington, that in this dark hour he rests with one great arm upon his political friends, and the other on his political opponents, and that, as he looks abroad over the country whose destinies are in his keeping, he sees neither republicans nor democrats — neither nativists nor aliens, he sees but two classes, loyal citizens on the one side, and traitors on the other.

The feeling exhibited throughout the loyal States is not, as some Europeans have supposed, an ebullition of enthusiasm, based upon sudden and evanescent passion, but the expression of a profound conviction gradually forced upon them by a long train of facts that culminated at Sumter, that both duty and honor imperatively demand that they shall crush this gigantic conspiracy against the integrity of the country.

It was this that, within six weeks, called forth, as if by magic, any army of 200,000, converting our cities into camps, and making the repression of this rebellion the one great business of the American people.

The scene has been one which, day by day, has thrilled us with emotion, one upon which the Bancroft and the Motley of the next century will linger with admiration.

Massachusetts first in the field, as in the olden days of trial, shedding the first blood at Baltimore, first to occupy and protect the capital, where her great senator was stricken down, against the traitors, whose hatred to him foreshadowed their hatred towards the American Constitution, of which he had been the faithful and eloquent expounder.

New York, “herself the noblest eulogium on the Union,” following close behind with her gallant Seventh, reaching Washington by a march already famous, and insuring by their presence the safety of Washington. The New England States, Pennsylvania and the Great West, pouring in their quotas with generous rivalry, and our foreign population rising instantly to the grandeur of the occasion, and hastening to the defence of their adopted country, present features of strength in the American Republic of which the most ardent of its eulogists had hardly dreamed.

If any man has regarded our large foreign element as one that threatened danger to the perpetuity of popular institutions, let him glance at the regiments now gathering to battle in their behalf. He will find among them men who have fought for freedom in other lands, and who have pined for their love of it in continental dungeons. He will find scholars from far-famed universities, and graduates of the military schools of Europe who have emerged from positions in which they were gaining an independency to proffer to their country their dear-bought experience, and guide and instruct the military ardor that sweeps like a whirlwind over the land. Call the roll of nationalities and you will have responses from England and Ireland, Scotland and Wales, from natives of Catholic France and Protestant Germany — you will have replies from Poles who yet dream of an independent Poland, from Hungarians in whose ears still lingers the eloquence of Kossuth, from Italians rejoicing in a regenerated Italy, and who are fresh from executing the policy of the lamented Cavour and from fighting by the side of Garibaldi. Every people of Christendom has its representatives in the army of the Union that has gone forth to fight for national unity, national independence, and the rights of human nature, against the confederated forces of slavery and treason.

In this crisis of our national history it is natural that we should regard with interest the view taken of our course by the great powers of Europe, and especially by that country with which as colonies we were so long connected, and which, despite the two wars that have been waged between us, we are accustomed to remember as our mother-land. Mingled with our Dutch and Huguenot ancestry, a very large proportion of the older families of America trace their descent from England, and many who do not are yet connected with her by no common ties. For myself, I may say that I have always entertained for her people an hereditary feeling of attachment, from the fact that my Huguenot ancestors, when they fled from Rochelle, after the revocation by Louis XIV. of the edict of Nantes, found upon her soil a welcome and a home; and that one of them, volunteering for King William against James II., shed his blood for English freedom at the battle of the Boyne, that great era in English history, ending, as we hope, forever her civil wars, from which dates the establishment on a firm basis, of the unity, the strength, and the world-wide dominion of the British empire. Such memories, and doubtless, my countrymen, you have many such, descend from father to son undimmed by national revolutions. They inspire sentiments of affection and kinship, that like family heir-looms gather new value from the lapse of time, and instead of fading as years and centuries roll by, seem the more sacred and imperishable from the thought of the generations by whom they have been cherished, and who have each in turn added a link to the chain of association.

The recent visit of the Prince of Wales, coming to us as the representative of the British nation, characterized as it was by the most graceful courtesy and cordiality on his part, and by the heartiest welcome upon ours, with