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[242] chiefly of younger members of the bar, and continued with them for several months. With the first call for volunteers arose in his mind a most painful conflict. His military tastes and competency seemed to summon him to put in practice, in a cause dearer to him than life, the physical capabilities and theoretic skill in which he had perfected himself so thoroughly. Far more than this, his strong anti-slavery convictions prompted him to enlist in a war begun by the South in defence of slavery, but which put in our hands the power forever to destroy that baneful seed of evil. But with Willard the conviction of duty was always the result of cool deliberation, never of mere enthusiastic sentiment. He was now past the age when want of fixed position in life, mere youth and absence of responsibilities, make war a source of fascinating attraction, like hunting or adventure, only far more potent than these from its realities, its perils, and its glory. Nor did this first call for volunteers awaken any general sense of the magnitude of the impending contest, of whose favorable issue no one then doubted; and to one who appreciated as Willard did the efficiency of thorough organization, it seemed an easy task for the government to use its vast powers, and create an army able to sweep unresisted from the Potomac to the Gulf of Mexico. He knew his own fitness for the administration of military affairs,—perhaps no more accomplished soldier ever entered the army from civil life,—and every man whom he trained for the war increased his sensitiveness as to his selfsuggested duty to take up arms in person. But he felt equally well the reality of duties at home, that he himself was even better fitted for peace than for war, and that in enlisting he must abandon much which he had long educated himself to be able to perform,—an ability which the growing recognition of the community had fully indorsed. He could not, therefore, close his ears to the voice of duty which bade him stay. But he gave his time lavishly to complete the general preparation of the community for whatever might come. Several hundred men in different organizations received his instruction in drilling, and he was unsurpassed as a drill-master; and many also
Sever and Francis, 1866.
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