It struck me like death. There, displayed in all its horrors, was the first account of the Battle of Bull Run,--which had been fought the previous afternoon,--exactly at the time when my uncle was assuring us that the United States Army was to march at once to Richmond and end the war. The catastrophe seemed fatal. The plans of General McDowell had come utterly to nought; our army had been scattered to the four winds; large numbers of persons, including sundry members of Congress who had airily gone out with the army to ``see the fun,'' among them one from our own neighborhood, Mr. Alfred Ely, of Rochester, had been captured and sent to Richmond, and the rebels were said to be in full march on the National Capital.
Sumner was jubilant. ``This,'' he said, ``will make the American people understand what they have to do; this will stop talk such as your uncle gave us yesterday afternoon.'' But to me it was a fearful moment. Sumner's remarks grated horribly upon my ears; true as his view was, I could not yet accept it.
And now preparations for war, and, indeed, for repelling invasion, began in earnest. My friends all about me were volunteering, and I also volunteered, but was rejected with scorn; the examining physician saying to me, ``You will be a burden upon the government in the first hospital you reach; you have not the constitution to be of use in carrying a musket; your work must be of a different sort.''
My work, then, through the summer was with those who sought to raise troops and to provide equipments for them. There was great need of this, and, in my opinion, the American people have never appeared to better advantage than at that time, when they began to realize their duty, and to set themselves at doing it. In every city, village, and hamlet, men and women took hold of the work, feeling that the war was their own personal business. No other country since the world began has ever seen a more noble outburst of patriotism or more efficient aid by individuals to their government. The National and State authorities of course did everything in their power; but men and women did not wait for them. With the exception of those whose bitter partizanship led them to oppose the war in all its phases, men, women, and children engaged heartily and efficiently in efforts to aid the Union in its struggle.
Various things showed the depths of this feeling. Iremember meeting one day, at that period, a man who had risen by hard work from simple beginnings to the head of an immense business, and had made himself a multi-millionaire. He was a hard, determined, shrewd man of affairs, the last man in the world to show anything like sentimentalism, and as he said something advising an investment in the newly created National debt, I answered, ``You are not, then, one of those who believe that our new debt will be repudiated?'' He answered: ``Repudia-tion or no repudiation, I am putting everything I can rake and scrape together into National bonds, to help this government maintain itself; for, by G--d, if I am not to have any country, I don't want any money.'' It is to be hoped that this oath, bursting forth from a patriotic heart, was, like Uncle Toby's, blotted out by the recording angel. I have quoted it more than once to show how the average American--though apparently a crude materialist--is, at heart, a thorough idealist.
Returning to the University of Michigan at the close of the vacation, I found that many of my students had enlisted, and that many more were preparing to do so. With some it was hard indeed. I remember two especially, who had for years labored and saved to raise the money which would enable them to take their university course; they had hesitated, for a time, to enlist; but very early one morning I was called out of bed by a message from them, and, meeting them, found them ready to leave for the army. They could resist their patriotic convictions no longer, and they had come to say good-bye to me. They went into the war; they fought bravely through the thickest of it; and though one was badly wounded, both lived to return, and are to-day honored citizens. With many others it was different; many, very many of them, alas, were among the ``unreturning brave!'' and loveliest and noblest of all, my dear friend and student, Frederick Arne, of Princeton, Illinois, killed in the battle of Shiloh, at the very beginning of the war, when all was blackness and discouragement. Another of my dearest students at that time was Albert Nye. Scholarly, eloquent, noble-hearted, with every gift to ensure success in civil life, he went forth with the others, rose to be captain of a company, and Ithink major of a regiment. He sent me most kindly messages, and at one time a bowie-knife captured from a rebel soldier. But, alas! he was not to return.
I may remark, in passing, that while these young men from the universities, and a vast host of others from different walks of life, were going forth to lay down their lives for their country, the English press, almost without exception, from the ``Times'' down, was insisting that we were fighting our battles with ``mercenaries.''
One way in which those of us who remained at the university helped the good cause was in promoting the military drill of those who had determined to become soldiers.
It was very difficult to secure the proper military instruction, but in Detroit I found a West Point graduate, engaged him to come out a certain number of times every week to drill the students, and he cheered us much by saying that he had never in his life seen soldiers so much in earnest, and so rapid in making themselves masters of the drill and tactics.
One of my advisers at this period, and one of the noblest men I have ever met, was Lieutenant Kirby Smith, a graduate of West Point, and a lieutenant in the army.
