Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

[247] was offered to my old schoolmate, Charles Devens, who, though almost wholly ignorant of military drill, accepted it on condition that our best local drill-master, Captain Goodhue, should go with him as adjutant. My reasons for not accepting were various: first, that I doubted my competency; secondly, that my wife, always an invalid, was just at that time especially dependent on me; and lastly, that it was then wholly uncertain whether the government would take the anti-slavery attitude, without which a military commission would have been for me intolerable, since I might have been ordered to deliver up fugitive slaves to their masters,--as had already happened to several officers. I have often thought what a difference it might have made in both Devens's life and mine if I had accepted this early opportunity. I might have come out a major-general, as he did; but I dare say that the government gained by the exchange a better soldier than it lost. Meanwhile I went on drilling and taking fencing lessons; and a few months later, when the anti-slavery position of the government became clearer, I obtained authority from Governor Andrew to raise a regiment, and had about half the necessary ten companies provided for, in different parts of the State, when one of the sudden stoppages of recruiting occurred, and