Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Massachusetts in the Army and Navy during the war of 1861-1865, vol. 1: prelminary narrative

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[5] Southern States, ‘It would not last six months;’ while, on the other hand, one of the best of the Massachusetts militia officers, who went out as adjutant of General Devens's battalion at the very beginning, and afterwards entered the regular army, said, after the attack on Sumter, ‘I would rather have England and France together upon us than this.’ Captain Goodhue was right; war with England and France might have led to the capture or burning of a few cities, but the pressure of the civilized world would have soon settled it by diplomacy, at a cost of money and life incomparably less than that of the contest which was now impending. As it was, the material cost of the war was best summed up by Gen. W. T. Sherman, who said, at Portland, Oregon (July 3, 1890), ‘I do believe, as I believe in Him who rules above us all, that this country spent one thousand million dollars and one hundred thousand lives to teach you the art of war.’¹

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Ii. The war governor.

On Jan. 5, 1861, John Albion Andrew was inaugurated as governor of Massachusetts, having been chosen to that office during the previous autumn, rather through a popular impulse than by any plans of political managers; and having received the largest popular vote given up to that time to any Massachusetts governor. He stood before the people a figure of unique appearance and bearing,—short, stout, blue-eyed, with closely curling brown hair, smooth cheeks, and a general effect that was feminine, though very sturdily so. He entered on his duties with universal popular confidence as to his intentions, but absolutely untried as to large executive duties. His personal habits were pacific and even sedentary; he had no taste for any pageantry, least of all for that of war; yet in his very inaugural address he showed that he had grasped the situation of the country, and from that day he was, emphatically and thoroughly, the war governor.

Governor Andrew was frank, outspoken, with no concealments and little solicitude for any reserve in others. It was said at the State House that his predecessors had been much given to private and confidential interviews; but that he went to the other extreme. Everything was aboveboard; he talked as freely among his clerks and visitors as in the most secluded privacy. In preliminary negotiations, sometimes delicate and difficult, about the forming