John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life

[15]

I. The tocsin of war.

A score of millions hear the cry
And herald it abroad,
To arms they fly to do or die
For liberty and God.

E. P. Dyer.

And yet they keep gathering and marching away!
Has the nation turned soldier-and all in a day?

There's the father and son!
While the miller takes gun

With the dust of the wheat still whitening his hair;
Pray where are they going with this martial air?

F. E. Brooks.

On the 6th of November, 1860, Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the Republican party, was elected President of the United States, over three opponents. The autumn of that year witnessed the most exciting political canvass this country had ever seen. The Democratic party, which had been in power for several years in succession, split into factions and nominated two candidates. The northern Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, who was an advocate of the doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty, that is, the right of the people living in a Territory which wanted admission into the Union as a State to