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their loved ones, now that blood had been spilt, were hurrying on toward great peril.
Regiment after regiment followed the Seventh in quick succession,1 and within ten days from the time of its departure, full ten thousand men of the city of New York were on the march toward the Capital.2
The Massachusetts regiment had been joined at Springfield by a company under Captain H. S. Briggs, and now numbered a little over seven hundred men. It reached Philadelphia several hours before the New York Seventh arrived there, and was bountifully entertained at the Girard House by the generous citizens.
There Butler first heard of the attack on the Sixth, in Baltimore.
His orders commanded him to march through that city.
It was now impossible to do so with less than ten thousand armed men. He counseled with Major-General Robert Patterson, who had just been appointed commander of the “Department of Washington,” which embraced the States of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, and the District of Columbia, and whose Headquarters were at Philadelphia.
Commodore Dupont, commandant of the Navy Yard there, was also consulted, and it was agreed that the troops should go by water from Perryville, at the mouth of the Susquehanna River, to Annapolis, and thence across Maryland to Washington City.
Butler was ordered to take that route, seize and hold Annapolis and Annapolis Junction, and open and thoroughly guard a military pathway to the Capital.3
1 “The enthusiasm of the people — of the young men in particular — was wonderful. Sometimes several brothers would enlist at the same time. The spirit of our women, who were animated by the same patriotic feelings, is well illustrated by a letter written by a New York mother of five sons who enlisted, to her husband. She was absent from home at the time. ‘ Your letter,’ she said, ‘ came to hand last evening. I must confess I was startled by the news referring to our boys, and, for the moment, I felt as if a ball had pierced my own heart. For the first time I was obliged to look things full in the face. But although I have always loved my children with a love that none but a mother can know, yet, when I look upon the state of my country, I can not withhold them; and in the name of their God, and their mother's God, and their country's God, I bid them go. If I had. ten sons instead of five, I would give them all sooner than have our country rent in fragments. . . . I hope you will provide them each with a Bible, and give them their mother's love and blessing, and tell them our prayers — will accompany them, and ascend on their behalf, night and day.’ ” --The History of the Civil War in America: by J. S. C. Abbott, i. 108.
In contrast with this was the letter of a Baltimore mother to her loyal son, a clergyman in Boston, who, on, the Sunday after the attack on Fort Sumter, preached a patriotic discourse to his people. The letter was as follows:--The son replied:--
2 John Sherman, now (1865) United States Senator from Ohio, was then an aid-de-camp of General Patterson. He was sent by that officer to lay before General Scott the advantages of the Annapolis route, suggested by General Patterson. The route was approved of by the Lieutenant-General. See A Narrative of the Campaign in the Valley of the Shenandoah: by Robert Patterson, late Major-General of Volunteers.
3 In the midst of the wild tumult, caused by the call to arms — the braying of trumpets and the roll of drums — the representatives of a sect of exemplary Christians, who had ever borne testimony against the practices of war, met in the City of New York (April 23), and reiterated that testimony. That sect was the Society of Friends, or Quakers. They put forth an Address to their brethren, counseling them to beware of the temptations of the hour, and to pray for divine blessings on their country. They were a loyal “Peace party” for conscience‘ sake. “We love our country,” they said, “and acknowledge, with gratitude to our Heavenly Father, the many blessings we have been favored with under its Government, and can feel no sympathy with any who seek its overthrow; but, in endeavoring to uphold and maintain it, as followers of the Prince of Peace, we must not transgress the precepts and injunction of the Gospel.” --Address to the Members of the Religious Society of Friends within the limits of the New York Yearly Meeting. Signed, “William Wood, Clerk.” Similar testimony was borne by the Quakers elsewhere; yet the homily was practically unheeded by a large number of the younger members, who, with many of their seniors, held that the war was an exceptional one--a holy war of Righteousness against Sin. They were, as a body of Christians, universally loyal to the flag, even in North Carolina; and while they avoided, as far as possible, the practices of war, which their conscience and Discipline condemned, they aided the Government in every other way, such as services in hospitals, and other employments in which non-combatants might engage. A large number of their young men, however, bore arms in the field, and acted in compliance with the spirit of the alleged injunction of the Philadelphia mother:--“Let thy musket not hold a silent meeting before the enemy.”
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