Oliver Otis Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, major general , United States army : volume 1

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[103] for the evidences of an approaching collision on a large scale were multiplying. The story of Twiggs's surrender of United States troops to Texas, followed by details of imprisonment and paroling, reached us in the latter part of February. Twiggs's promises to allow the troops to go North were mostly broken. Six companies of the United States Infantry, including a few officers and men of other regiments, Lieutenant Colonel Reeve commanding, were obliged to give up to a Confederate commander, Earl Van Dorn, by May 9th.

The organizers of the secession movement soon succeeded “in firing the Southern heart.” As we men from the North and South, at our post on the Hudson, looked anxiously into each other's faces, such indeed was the situation that we knew that civil war with its unknown horrors was at hand.

One morning, as officers and professors gathered near the lofty pillars under the stone archway of the old academy, there was rehearsed, one after another adding his own paper's version, the exaggerated accounts of the terrible handling that the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteers had had from a Baltimore mob. “Much blood shed I Some killed and many wounded, resulting in a complete break — up of the route to Washington and the shutting off of the capital from the North!” That was a brief of our gloomy news. Another morning the cloud lifted. There were better tidings. “Baltimore recaptured by General B. F. Butler 1” Butler, even without General Scott's sanction, had appeared there in the night with enough men to seize and hold Federal Hill. From that fine position he commanded the city.

Another occasion (May 24th) brought us the wildest tales of our troops entering Virginia, and of the