The Victim: A Romance of the Real Jefferson Davis

by Jr. Thomas Dixon

CHAPTER I

THE CURTAIN RISES

"For the Lord's sake, Jennie—"

Dick Welford paused at the bottom of a range of steps which wound up the capitol hill from Pennsylvania Avenue.

The girl standing at the top stamped her foot imperiously.

"Hurry—hurry!"

"I won't—"

"Then I'll leave you!"

The boy laughed.

"You don't dare. It's barely sunup—still dark in spots—the boogers'll get you—"

With a grin he deliberately sat down.

"Dick Welford, you're the laziest white man I ever saw in my life—We won't get a seat, I tell you—"

"We can stand up."

"We won't even get our noses in the door—"

"You don't think these old Senators get up at daylight, do you?"

"They didn't go to bed last night—"

"I'll bet they didn't!" Dick laughed.

"I know one that didn't anyhow—"

"Who?"

"Senator Davis."

"How do you know?"

"Spent the night there. Father stayed so late, Mrs. Davis put me to bed. Regular procession all night long! And among his visitors the Blackest Republican of them all—"

"Old Abe run over from Illinois to say good-by?"

"No, but his right hand man Seward did—"

"Sly old snuff-dipping hypocrite—"

"Anyhow, he's the brains of his party."

"And he called on Jeff Davis last night?"

"Not the first time either. Mrs. Davis told me that when the Senator was so ill with neuralgia and came near losing his sight, Seward came every day, sat in the darkened room and talked for hours to his enemy—"

"That's because he's a Black Republican. Their ways are dark. They like rooms with the shades pulled down—"

"Anyhow he likes Mr. Davis."

"Well, it's good-by to the old Union—how many Senators are going to-day?"

"Yulee and Mallory from Florida, Clay and Fitzpatrick from Alabama and Senator Davis—"

"All in a day?"

"Yes—"

"Jennie, they'll talk their heads off. It'll be three o'clock before the first one finishes. We'll die. Let's go to Mt. Vernon—"

"Dick Welford, I'm ashamed of you. You've no patriotism at all—"

"And I just proposed a pilgrimage to the home of George Washington!"

"You don't care what happens in the Senate Chamber to-day—"

"No—I don't."

The boy's lazy figure slowly rose, mounted the steps, paused and looked down into the tense eager young face.

"You really want to know," he began slowly, "why speaking tires me now?"

"Yes—why?"

"Because it's a waste of breath—we're going to fight!"

The girl flushed with excitement.

"Who told you? What have you heard? Who said so?"

A dreamy look in the boy's eyes deepened.

"Nobody's told me. I just know. It's in the air. A wild duck knows when to go north. A bluebird knows when to move south. It's in the air. That's the way I know—" his voice dropped. "Let's go to Mt. Vernon and spend the day, Jennie—"

The girl looked up sharply. The low persuasive tones were unmistakable.

The faintest flush mantled her cheeks.

"No—I wouldn't miss those speeches for anything. You promised to take me to the Senate gallery. Come on."

With a quick bound the boy scaled the next flight of steps and looked down at her laughing:

"All right, why don't you come on!"

With a frown she sprang up the stone stairs and he caught her step with a sudden military salute. They walked in silence for a few minutes.

"What's the matter with you to-day, Dick Welford?"

"Why, Miss Jennie Barton?"

"I never saw you quite so foolish."

"Maybe it's because I never saw you quite so pretty—"

The little figure stiffened with dignity.

"That will do now, sir—"

"Yessum!"

She threw him a look of quiet scorn as they picked their way through the piles of building material for the unfinished dome of the Capitol and mounted the steps.

Barely half past seven o'clock and the crowds were pouring into the Senate Chamber, its cloak rooms and galleries. Within thirty minutes after they had found seats opposite the diplomatic gallery every inch of space in the great hall was jammed and packed.

Southern women and their escorts outnumbered the others five to one. The Southern wing of official Washington was out in force.

The tense electric atmosphere was oppressive.

The men and women whose eager anxious faces looked down on the circular rows of senatorial chairs and desks were painfully conscious that they were witnessing the final scene of a great historical era.

What the future might hold God alone could know. Their fathers had dreamed a beautiful dream—"E Pluribus Unum"—one out of many. The Union had yet to be realized as an historical fact. The discordant elements out of which our Constitution had been strangely wrought had fought their way at last into two irreconcilable hostile sections, the very structure of whose civilization rested on antagonistic conceptions of life and government.

The Northern Senators were in their seats with grave faces long before the last straggling Southerner picked his way into the Chamber bowing and smiling and apologizing to the ladies on whose richly embroidered dresses he must step or give up the journey.

For weeks the pretense of polite formalities between parties had been unconsciously dropped. Men no longer bowed and smirked and passed the time of day with shallow words.

With heads erect, they glanced at each other and passed on. And if they spoke, it was with taunt, insult and challenge.

Jennie's keen eyes rested on two vacant chairs on the floor of the Senate—every seat was crowded save these two.

She pressed Dick's arm.

"See—the vacant seats of South Carolina!"

"They're not vacant," the boy drawled.

"They are—look—"

"I see a white figure in each—"

"Nonsense!"

"We're going to have war, I tell you! Death sits in those chairs to-day, Jennie—"

"Sh—don't talk like that—"

The boy laughed.

"I'm not afraid, you know—just a sort of second sight—maybe it means I'll be killed—"

---

South Carolina had felt no forebodings on the day her Convention had recalled those Senators. Kiett the eloquent leader of the Convention sprang to his feet, his face flaming with passion that was half delirium as he shouted:

"This day is the culmination of long years of bitterness, of suffering and of struggle. We are performing a great deed, which holds in its magic not only the stirring present, it embraces the ages yet to come. I am content with what has been done to-day. I shall be content with it to-morrow. We have lowered the body of the old Union to its last resting place. We drop the flag over its grave."

When the vote was announced, without a single dissenting voice, the crowd rose to their feet with a shout of applause which shook the building to its foundations. It died away at last only to rise again with redoubled fury.

Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida had followed in rapid succession, Louisiana's Convention was to meet on the twenty-sixth, Texas on February first. On this the twenty-first day of January the Senators from Florida, Mississippi and Alabama had announced their farewell addresses to the Old Union.

The girl's eyes swept the crowded tiers of the galleries packed with beautifully gowned Southern women. Every glove, fan, handkerchief, bonnet or dress—every dainty stocking and filmy piece of lingerie had been imported direct from the fashion centers of Europe. Gowns of priceless lace and velvets had been woven to order in the looms of Genoa, Venice and Brussels.

The South was rich.

And yet not one of her representatives held his office in Washington because of his money. Her ruling classes were without exception an aristocracy of brains—yet they were distinctly an aristocracy.

The election of Abraham Lincoln was more than a threat to confiscate three thousand millions of dollars which the South had invested in slaves. The homely rail splitter from the West was the prophecy of a new social order which threatened the foundations of the modern world. He himself was all unconscious of this fact. And yet this big reality was the secret of the electric tension which strangled men into silence and threw over the scene the sense of ominous foreboding.

The debates in Congress during the tempestuous session had been utterly insincere and without meaning. The real leaders knew that the time for discussion had passed. Two absolutely irreconcilable moral principles had clashed and the Republic was squarely and hopelessly broken into two vast sectional divisions on the issue.

Beyond the fierce and uncompromising hatred of Slavery which had grown into a consuming passion throughout the North and had resulted in the election of Lincoln as a purely sectional candidate—behind and underneath this apparent moral rage lay a bigger and far more elemental fact—the growing consciousness of the laboring man that the earth and the fullness thereof were his.

And bigger than the fear of the confiscation of their property and the destruction of the Constitution their fathers had created loomed before the Southern mind the Specter of a new democracy at the touch of whose fetid breath the soul of culture and refinement they believed must die. In the vulgar ranks of this democracy must march sooner or later four million negroes but yesterday from the jungles of Africa.

This greater issue was felt but dimly by the leaders on either side but it was realized with sufficient clearness to make compromise impossible.

In vain did the aged and the feeble plead once more for compromise. Real men no longer wished it.

The day of reckoning had come. The seeds of this tragedy were planted in the foundation structure of the Republic.

The Union of our fathers, for all the high sounding phrases of its Declaration of Independence was not a democracy. It was from the beginning an aristocratic republic founded squarely on African Slavery. And the degraded position assigned to the man who labored with his hands was recognized in our organic law.

The Constitution itself was the work of a rich and powerful group of leaders in each State, and its provisions were a compromise of conflicting sectional property interests.

The world had moved from 1789 to 1861.

The North was unconsciously lifting the banner of a mighty revolution. The South was clinging with the desperation of despair to the faith of its fathers.

The North was the world of steam and electricity, of new ideas, of progress. The South still believed in the divine inspiration of the men who founded the Republic. They must believe in it, for their racial life depended on it. Four million negroes could not be loosed among five million Southern white people and two such races live side by side under the principles of a pure democracy. Had this issue been put to them in the beginning not one Southern State would have entered the Union.

The Northern workingman, with steam and electricity bringing North and South into closer and closer touch, answered this cry of fear from the South with the ultimatum of democracy:

"This Nation can not endure half slave and half free!"

Back of all the mouthings of demagogues and the billingsgate of sectionalists lay this elemental fact—a democracy against a republic.

Nor could the sword of the Sections settle such an issue. The sectional sword could only settle an issue which grew out of it—whether a group of States holding a common interest in this conflict of principles could combine for their own peace and safety, leave the old Union, form a new one and settle it in their own way.

The North said no—the South said yes. This conviction bigger than party platforms was the brooding terror which brought the sense of tragedy to young and old, the learned and the unlearned—that made young men see visions and maids dream of mighty deeds.

---

The Southern boy's eyes had again rested on the vacant chairs of the Senators from South Carolina with a set look in their depths.

The crowd turned with sudden stir to the door of the Senate Chamber.

"Look," Jennie cried, "that's Mrs. Clem Clay of Alabama—how pale and beautiful she is! The Senator's going to make the speech of his life to-day. She's scared—Ah, that dress, that dress—isn't it a dream? Did you ever see such a piece of velvet—and—do look at that dear little gold hand holding the skirt up just high enough to see the exquisite lace on her petticoat—"

"Where's the golden hand—I don't see it?" Dick broke in skeptically.

"Don't you see the chain hanging from her waist?"

"Yes, I see that."

"Follow it with your eye and you'll see the hand. The Bayard sisters introduced them from Paris, you know."

The boy had ceased to listen to Jennie's chatter. His eye had suddenly rested on a group of three men seated in the diplomatic gallery—one evidently of high official position by the deference paid him. The man on the left of the official was young, handsome, slender, and pulled the corners of his mustache with a slow lazy touch of his graceful hand. His eyes were fixed on Jennie with a steady gaze. The Minister from Sardinia, of the Court of Victor Emmanuel, sat on the right, bowing and gesticulating with an enthusiasm out of all proportion to the importance of the conversation.

Behind this group sat a fourth man who leaned forward occasionally and whispered to the official. His face was in shadow and the only thing Dick could see was the thick dark brown beard which covered his regular features and a pair of piercing black eyes.

"For heaven's sake, Jennie," the boy cried at last, "who is that villain in the Diplomatic gallery?"

"Where?"

"In the corner there on the right."

"Oh, that's the Sardinian Minister—King Victor Emmanuel's new drummer of trade for Genoa. He's getting ahead of the French, too."

"No—no, I don't mean that little rat. I mean the big fellow with the heavy jaw and a face like a rattlesnake. He's trying to charm you too."

Jennie laughed.

"Silly! That's the new Secretary of War, Joseph Holt."

"A scoundrel, if God ever made one—"

"Because he looks at me?"

"No—that shows his good taste. It's the way he looks at you and moves his crooked mouth and the way he bends his big flat head forward."

"Rubbish—he's a loyal Southerner—and if we have to fight he'll be with us."

"Yes—he—will!"

"Of course, he will. He's careful now. He's in old Buck's cabinet. Wait and see. He called on Mr. Davis last night."

"That's nothing—so did old Seward—"

"Different—Seward's a Black Republican from New York—Holt's a Southern Democrat from Mississippi."

"And who's the young knight by his side with the dear little mustache to which he seems so attached?"

Jennie looked in silence for a moment.

"I never saw him before. He's handsome, isn't he?"

"Looks to me like a young black snake just shed his skin waiting for that old adder to show him how to strike."

"Dick—"

"God save the Queen! They're coming here—they're coming for you—"

The Secretary of War had nodded in recognition of Jennie, risen suddenly, and moved toward the gallery exit with his slender companion.

"Nonsense, Dick—he only bowed because he saw me staring—"

"He's bringing that mustache to meet you—"

The boy turned with a scowl toward the door of their gallery and saw the Secretary of War slowly making his way through the crowd to their seats.

"I told you so—"

Jennie blushed and smiled in friendly response to the Secretary's awkward effort at Southern politeness.

"Miss Barton, may I ask a little favor of you?"

"Certainly, Mr. Holt. Allow me to introduce my friend, Mr. Welford of Virginia."

The Secretary bowed stiffly and Dick nodded his head with indifference.

"The Italian Minister with whom I've just been talking wishes the honor of an introduction for his Secretary. Miss Jennie, will you meet him?"

"Certainly—"

"He's looking forward to the possible new Empire of the South," Holt whispered, "and proposes at an early day to forestall the French—"

Dick threw him a look of scorn as he returned to the door and rose with a scowl.

"I'll go out and get fresh air."

"Don't go—"

"I can't breathe in here. Two's company and three's a crowd."

She seized his arm:

"Please sit down, Dick."

"I'll be back directly—"

In spite of her protest he bounded up the steps of the gallery, turned sharply to the right, avoided the intruders and disappeared in the crowd.

The Secretary of War bowed again:

"Miss Barton, permit me to introduce to you Signor Henrico Socola, Secretary to His Excellency, the Minister of Sardinia."

The slender figure bent low with an easy grace.

"Pleased to meet you, Signor Socola," Jennie responded, lifting the heavy lashes from her lustrous brown eyes with the slightest challenge to his.

"The pleasure is all mine, Mad'moiselle," he gravely replied.

"You'll excuse me now if I hurry on?" the Secretary said, again bowing and disappearing in the crowd.

"Mr. Holt tells me, Miss Barton, that you know every Senator on the floor."

"Yes. My father has been in Congress and the Senate for twenty years."

"You'll explain the drama to me to-day when the curtain rises?"

"If I can."

"I'll be so much obliged—" he paused and the even white teeth smiled pleasantly. "I'm pretty well up on American history but confess a little puzzled to-day. Your Southern Senators are really going to surrender their power here without a struggle?"

"What do you mean?" the girl asked with a slight frown.

"That your Democratic party has still a majority in both the House and the Senate. If the Southern members simply sit still in their places, the incoming administration of Abraham Lincoln will be absolutely powerless. The new President can not even call a cabinet to his side without their consent."

"The North has elected their President," Jennie answered with decision. "The South scorns to stoop to the dishonor of cheating them out of it. They've won the election. They can have it. The South will go and build a government of her own—as we built this one—"

"And fight twenty-three million people of the North?"

"If forced to—yes!"

"With the certainty of an uprising of your slaves at home?"

Jennie laughed.

"Our slaves would fight for us if we'd let them—"

A curious smile twitched the lips of the Italian.

"You speak with great confidence, Miss Barton!"

"Yes. I know what I'm talking about."

The keen eyes watched her from the shadows of the straight thick brows.

"And your Senators who took a solemn oath in entering this Chamber to support the Constitution will leave their seats in violation of that oath?"

The Southern girl flushed, turned with quick purpose to answer, laughed and said with winning frankness:

"You don't mind if I give you my father's answer in his own words? I know them by heart—"

"By all means."

"An oath to support the Constitution of the United States does not bind the man who takes it to support an administration elected by a mob whose purpose is to subvert the Constitution!"

"Oh,—I see," was the quiet response.

"You speak English with perfection, Signor!" Jennie said with a smile.

"Yes, Mad'moiselle, I've spent my life in the Diplomatic service."

He bowed gravely, lifted his head and caught the smile on the lips of the Secretary of War standing in the shadows of the doorway of the Diplomatic gallery.

The stately figure of John C. Breckinridge, the Vice-President, suddenly mounted the dais and his piercing eyes swept the assembly. He rapped for order and the silence which followed was as the hush of death.

"The curtain rises on our drama, Mad'moiselle," the smooth even voice said.

"Sh!" the girl whispered.

---

CHAPTER II

THE PARTING

The breathless galleries leaned forward to catch the slightest sound from the arena below.

One by one the Senators from the seceding Southern States rose and renounced their allegiance to the United States in obedience to the voice of their people.

With each solemn exit the women of the galleries grew hysterical, waved their perfumed handkerchiefs and shouted their approval with cries of sympathy and admiration.

David Yulee, Stephen K. Mallory and Benjamin Fitzpatrick had each closed his portfolio and with slow measured tread marched down the crowded aisle and out of the Chamber never again to enter its doors.

All eyes were focused now on the brilliant young Senator from Alabama, Clement C. Clay, Jr. It was understood that he had prepared an eloquent defense of his action and would voice the passionate feeling of the masses of the Southern people in this his last utterance in the crumbling temple of the old Republic.

He rose in his place, lifted his strong head with its leonine locks and broad, high forehead, paused a moment and began his speech in the clear steady tones of the trained orator, master of himself, his theme and his audience. The Northern Senators met his gaze with scorn and he answered with a look of bold defiance.

The formal announcement of the secession of his State he made in brief sharp sentences and plunged at once into the reasons for their solemn act.

"Forty-two years ago, Alabama was admitted into the Union," he declared in ringing tones. "She entered it as she goes out, with the Republic convulsed by the hostility of the North to her domestic institutions. Not a decade has passed, not a year has elapsed since her birth as a State that has not been marked by the steady and insolent growth of the mob violence of the North which has demanded the confiscation of her property and the destruction of the foundations of her civilization.

"Who are the leaders of these mobs who seek thus to overthrow the Constitution? Who are these hypocrites who claim the championship of freedom and the moral leadership of the world?

"The men who sold their own slaves to us because they could not use them with profit in a northern climate; the men who built and manned every American slave ship that ever sailed the seas; the sons of old Peter Faneuil of Boston who built Faneuil Hall, their cradle of liberty, out of the profits of slave ships whose trade the Southern people had forbidden by law; the men who have flooded Congress for two generations with petitions to dissolve the Union; the men who threatened to secede with the addition of every foot of territory we have added to our Republic!

"These are the men who have denied to the manhood of the South Christian Communion because they could not endure what they have been pleased to style the moral leprosy of Slavery! These are the men who refuse us permission to sojourn or even pass through the sacred precincts of a Northern State and dare to carry our servants with us. These are the men who deny to the South equal rights in the lands of the West bought by Southern blood and brains and added to our inheritance against their furious protests. These are the men who burn the sacred charters of American Liberty in their public squares, and inscribe on their banners the foul motto:

"'The Constitution is an agreement with Death, a covenant with Hell.'

"These are the men who dare to call us traitors! These are the men who have deliberately passed laws in fourteen Northern States nullifying the provisions of the Constitution of the Union which they have sworn to defend and enforce—"

The speaker paused and lifted high above his head a little morocco bound volume.

"Here in the presence of Almighty God—the God of our fathers, and these witnesses, I read its solemn provisions which the laws of fourteen Northern States have brazenly and openly defied!"

He opened the little book and slowly read:

"'Article 4, Section 2.

"'No person held to service of labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor—but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.'"

He turned suddenly to the Northern Senators:

"Your States have not only repudiated the Constitution you have sworn to uphold, but your emissaries have invaded the peaceful South and sought to lay it waste with fire and sword and servile insurrection. You have murdered Southern men who have dared demand their rights on Northern soil. You have invaded the borders of Southern States, burned their dwellings and murdered their people. You have proclaimed John Brown, the criminal maniac who sought to murder innocent and helpless men, women and children in Virginia, a hero and martyr and then denounced us in your popular meetings, your religious and legislative assemblies as habitual violators of the laws of God and the rights of humanity! You have exerted all the moral and physical agencies that human ingenuity can devise or a devil's malice employ to heap odium and infamy upon us and make the very name of the South a by-word of hissing and of scorn throughout the civilized world—"

He paused overcome with emotion and lifted his hand to stay the burst of applause from the galleries.

"We have borne all this for long years and might have borne it many more under the assurance of our Northern friends that such fanaticism does not represent the true heart of the Northern people. But the fallacy of these promises and the folly of our hopes have been too clearly proven in the late election. The platform of the political party on which you have swept every Northern State and elected a sectional President is a foul libel upon our character and a declaration of open war on the lives and property of the Southern people.

"In defiance of the Constitution which protects our rights your mob has decreed the confiscation of three thousand million dollars' worth of our property. If we claim the protection of our common law, your mob solemnly burns the Constitution in your public squares and denounces it as 'an agreement with Death and covenant with Hell.' We appeal to the Supreme Court of the Republic and when its Judges unanimously sustain our position on every point, your mob cries:

"'Down with the Supreme Court of the United States!'

"You have not only insulted us as unchristian and heathen, you have proclaimed that four million ignorant negroes but yesterday taken from the savagery of cannibal Africa are our equals and entitled to share in the solemn rights of American citizenship. Your declaration is an open summons that they rise in insurrection with the knife in one hand and the torch in the other.

"Your mob has declared the South outlawed, branded with ignominy, consigned to execration and ultimate destruction. Your mob has decreed the death of Slavery and sends the new President to execute their decree.

"All right—kill Slavery and then what? Kill Slavery and what will you do with its corpse? Who shall deliver us from the body of this death? We are not leaving this Hall to fight for the Institution of African Slavery. The grim specter of a degraded and mongrel citizenship which lies back of your mob's programme of confiscation is the force that is driving the Southern people out of the Union to find peace and safety. Whatever may be the sins of Slavery in the South they are as nothing when compared to the degradation of your life which must follow their violent emancipation. The Southern white man is slowly lifting the African out of barbarism into the light of Christian civilization. In our own good time we will emancipate him and start him on a new life beyond the boundaries of our Republic. Whatever may be the differences of opinion in the South on the institution of slavery—there is no difference and there has never been on one point—it was true yesterday—it is true to-day—it will be true to-morrow—Slavery is the only modus viviendi by which two such races as the Negro and the Aryan can live side by side in a free democracy with equality the law of its life—"

Again a burst of tumultuous applause swept the gallery.

"The issue is clear cut and terrible in its simplicity—the South stands on the faith of our fathers who created this Republic. The South stands for Constitutional freedom under the forms of established law. The North has lifted the red flag of revolution and proclaims the irresponsible despotism of an enthroned mob!

"For a generation your school mistresses have been training your boys to hate us and arming them to fight us. Make no mistake about this movement to-day. We who go are but the servants of those who sent us. They now recall their ambassadors, and we obey their sovereign will. Make no mistake about it. They are not a brave and rash people, deluded by bad men, who are attempting in an illegal way to wreck the Union. They seek peace and safety outside driven by the Rebellion against Law and Order within.

"Are we more or less than men? Can we love our enemies and bless them that curse and revile us? Are we devoid of the sensibilities, the sentiments, the passions, the reason, and the instincts of mankind? Have we no pride, no honor, no sense of shame, no reverence for our ancestors, no care for posterity, no love for home, or family or friends? Must we quail before the onion breath of an enthroned mob, confess our baseness, discredit the fame of our sires, degrade our children, abandon our homes, flee from our country and dishonor ourselves—all for the sake of a Union whose Constitution you have publicly burned and whose Supreme Court you have spit upon?

"Shall we consent to live under an administration controlled by those who not only deny us justice and equality and brand us as infamous, but boldly proclaim their purpose to rob us of our property and destroy our civilization?

"The freemen of Alabama have proclaimed to the world they will not. In their sovereign power they have recalled me. As their servant I go!"

With a wave of his hand in an imperious gesture of defiance to the silent Senators of the North, amid a scene of unparalleled passion, the speaker turned to his seat, gathered his books and papers and strode with quick firm step down the aisle.

Jennie had leaped to her feet and stood clapping her hands in a frenzy of excitement, unconscious of the existence of the strangely quiet young man by her side.

He rose and stood smiling into her flushed face as she gasped:

"A wonderful speech—wasn't it?"

"They say the South has never lacked audacity, Miss Barton. I'm wondering if they are really going to make good such words with deeds."

He spoke with a cold detachment that chilled and angered the impulsive girl. A hot answer was on her lips when she remembered suddenly that he was a foreigner.

"Of course, Signor, you can not understand our feelings!"

"On the other hand, I assure you, I do—I'm just wondering in a cold intellectual way whether the oratorical temperament—the temperament of passion, of righteous wrath of the explosive type which we have just witnessed, will win in the trial by fire which war will bring—"

"You doubt our courage?" she interrupted, with a slight curve of the proud little lips.

"Far from it—I assure you! I'm only wondering if it has the sullen, dogged, staying qualities these stolid Northern men down there have exhibited while they listened—"

The girl threw him a quick surprised look and he stopped. His voice had unconsciously taken the tones of a soliloquy.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Barton," he said, with sudden swing to the polite tones of society. "I'm annoying you with my foreign speculations—"

A sudden murmur swept the galleries and all eyes were turned on the tall slender figure of Jefferson Davis as he slowly entered the Senate Chamber.

"Who is it?" Socola asked.

"Senator Davis—you don't know him?"

"I have never seen him before. He has been quite ill I hear."

"Yes. He's been in bed for the past week suffering agonies from neuralgia. He lost the sight of one of his eyes from chronic pain caused by exposure in the service of his country in the northwest."

"Really—I didn't know that."

"He was compelled to remain in a darkened room for months the past year to save the sight of his remaining eye."

"That accounts for my not having seen him before."

Socola followed the straight military figure with painful interest as he slowly moved toward his seat greeting with evident weakness his colleagues as he passed. He was astonished beyond measure at the personality of the famous leader of the "Southern Conspirators" of whom he had heard so much. He was the last man in all the crowd he would have singled out for such a rôle. The face was too refined, too spiritual, too purely intellectual for the man of revolution. His high forehead, straight nose, thin compressed lips and pointed chin belonged to the poet and dreamer rather than the man of action. The hollow cheek bones and deeply furrowed mouth told of suffering so acute the sympathy of every observer was instantly won.

In spite of evident suffering his carriage was erect, dignified, and graceful. The one trait which fastened the attention from the first and held it was the remarkable intensity of expression which clothed his thin muscular face.

"You like him?" Jennie ventured at last.

"I can't say, Miss Barton," was the slowly measured answer. "He is a remarkably interesting man. I'm surprised and puzzled—"

"Surprised and puzzled at what?"

"Well, you see I know his history. The diplomatist makes it his business to know the facts in the lives of the leaders of a nation to whose Government he is accredited. Mr. Davis spent four years at West Point. He gave seven years of his life to the service of the army in the West. He carried your flag to victory in Mexico and hobbled home on crutches. He was one of your greatest Secretaries of War. He sent George B. McClellan and Robert E. Lee to the Crimea to master European warfare, organized and developed your army, changed the model of your arms, introduced the rifled musket and the minie ball. He explored your Western Empire and surveyed the lines of the great continental railways you are going to build to the Pacific Ocean. He planned and built your system of waterworks in the city of Washington and superintends now the extension of the Capitol building which will make it the most imposing public structure in the world. He has never stooped to play the part of a demagogue. He has never sought an office higher than the rôle of Senator which fits his character and temperament. His mind has always been busy dreaming of the imperial future of your widening Republic. His eye has seen the vision of its extension to the Arctic on the north and the jungles of Panama on the south. Why should such a man deliberately come into this chamber to-day before this assembled crowd and commit hari-kari?"

"He's a true son of the South!" Jennie Barton proudly answered.

"Even so, how can he do the astounding thing he proposes to carry out to-day? His record shows that passionate devotion to the Union has been the very breath of his life. I've memorized one of his outbursts as a model of your English language—"

Jennie laughed.

"I never heard of his Union speeches, I'm sure!"

"Strange that your people have forgotten them. Listen: 'From sire to son has descended the love of the Union in our hearts, as in our history are mingled the names of Concord and Camden, of Yorktown and Saratoga, of New Orleans and Bunker Hill. Together they form a monument to the common glory of our common country. Where is the Southern man who would wish that monument less by one Northern name that constitutes the mass? Who, standing on the ground made sacred by the blood of Warren, could allow sectional feeling to curb his enthusiasm as he looks upon that obelisk which rises a monument to freedom's and his country's triumph, and stands a type of the time, the men and the event it commemorates; built of material that mocks the waves of time, without niche or molding for parasite or creeping thing to rest upon, pointing like a finger to the sky to raise man's thoughts to high and noble deeds!'"

Socola paused and turned his dark eyes on Jennie's upturned face.

"How can the man who made that speech in Boston do this mad deed to-day?"

"Senator Clay has given the answer," was the girl's quick reply.

"For Senator Clay, yes—the fiery, impulsive, passionate child of emotion. But this thin hollow-cheeked student, thinker and philosopher, who spoke the thrilling words I quote—he should belong to the order of the Prophet and the Seer—the greatest leaders and teachers of history."

"We believe he does, Signor!" was the quick answer. "Look—he's going to speak—you'll hear him now."

Jennie leaned forward, her thoughtful little chin in both hands, as a silence so intense it was pain fell suddenly on the hushed assembly.

The face of the Southern leader was chalk white in its pallor. His first sentences were weak and scarcely reached beyond the circle of his immediate hearers. His physician had forbidden him to leave his room. The iron will had risen to perform a solemn duty. The Senators leaned forward in their arm-chairs fearful of losing a word.

He paused as if for breath and gazed a moment on the upturned faces with the look of lingering tenderness which the dying cast on those upon whom they gaze for the last time.

His figure suddenly rose to its full height, as if the soul within had thrust the feeble body aside to speak its message. His words, full, clear and musical rang to the furthest listener craning his neck through the jammed doorways of the galleries. Never was the music of the human voice more profoundly appealing. Unshed tears were in its throbbing tones.

There was no straining for effect—no outburst of emotion. The impression which reached the audience was the sense of restraint and the consciousness of his unlimited reserve power. Back of the simple clean-cut words which fell in musical cadence from his white lips was the certainty that he was only speaking a small part of what he felt, saw and knew. He neither stormed nor raved and yet he filled the hearts of his hearers with unspeakable passion.

He turned suddenly and bent his piercing single eye on the Northern Senators:

"I hope none who hear me will confound my position with the advocacy of the right of a State to remain in the Union and disregard its Constitutional obligations by the nullification of the law—"

A sudden cheer swept the tense galleries. The sergeant-at-arms called for order. The cheer rose again. The Vice-President rapped for silence and threatened to close the galleries. The speaker lifted his hand and commanded silence.

"It was because of his deep attachment to the Union—his determination to find some remedy for existing ills short of a severance of the ties which bound South Carolina to the other States—that John C. Calhoun advocated the doctrine of nullification which he proclaimed to be peaceful and within the limits of State power.

"Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. The phrase 'to execute the laws' General Jackson applied to a State refusing to obey the law while yet a member of the Union. You may make war on a foreign state. If it be the purpose of gentlemen—"

He paused and again his eagle eye swept the tiers of Northern Senators.

"You may make war against a State which has withdrawn from the Union; but there are no laws of the United States to be executed within the limits of a seceded State—"

Seward leaned forward in his seat and shook his head in grave dissent. The speaker bent his gaze directly upon his great antagonist and spoke with strange regretful tenderness.

"A State finding herself in a condition in which Mississippi has judged she is—in which her safety requires that she should provide for the maintenance of her rights out of the Union—surrenders all the benefits (and they are known to be many), deprives herself of all the advantages (and they are known to be great), severs all the ties of affections (and they are close and enduring) which have bound her to the Union; and thus divesting herself of every benefit—taking upon herself every burden—she claims to be exempt from any power to execute the laws of the United States within her limits.

"When Massachusetts was arraigned before the bar of the Senate for her refusal to permit the execution of the laws of the United States within her borders, my opinion was the same then as now. Her State is sovereign. She never delegated to the Federal Government the power to drive her by force. And when she chooses to take the last step which separates her from the Union, it is her right to go!—"

Another electric wave swept the crowd that burst into applause. The speaker lifted his long arm with an impatient gesture.

"And I would not vote one dollar nor one man to coerce her back into unwilling submission. I would say to her—'God speed in the memory of the kind associations which once existed between her and her sister States.'

"It has been a conviction of pressing necessity—a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed us—which has brought Mississippi to her present decision.

"You have invoked the sacred Declaration of Independence as the basis of an attack upon her social order. The Declaration of Independence is to be construed by the circumstances and purposes for which it was made. It was written by a Southern planter and slave owner. The Colonies were declaring their independence from foreign tyranny—were asserting in the language of Jefferson, 'that no man was born booted and spurred to ride over the rest of mankind; that men were created equal'—meaning the men of their American political community; that there was no divine right to rule; that no man could inherit the right to govern; that there were no classes by which power and place descended from father to son; but that all stations were equally within the grasp of each member of the body politic. These were the principles they announced.

"They had no reference to a slave. The same document denounced George III for the crime of attempting to stir their slaves to insurrection, as John Brown attempted at Harper's Ferry. If their Declaration of Independence announced that negroes were free and the equals of English citizens how could the Prince be arraigned for daring to raise servile insurrection among them? And how should this be named among the high crimes of George III which caused the Colonies to sever their connection with the Mother country?

"If slaves were declared our equals how did it happen that in the organic law of the Union they were given a lower caste and their population allowed (and that only through the dominant race) a basis of three-fifths representation in Congress? So stands the compact of Union which binds us together.

"We stand upon the principles on which our Government was founded!—"

The sentence rang clear and thrilling as the peal of a trumpet. The effect was electric. The galleries leaped to their feet, and cheered.

Jennie turned to the silent diplomat.

"Isn't he glorious!"

"He stirs the hearts of men"—was the even answer.

Around them were unmistakable evidences. Women were weeping hysterically and men embracing one another in silence and tears.

Again the Senator's hand was lifted high in command for silence and again he faced Seward and his Northern colleagues with figure tense, erect.

"When you repudiate these principles, and when you deny to us the right to withdraw from a Government which, thus perverted, threatens to destroy our rights, we but tread the path of our fathers when we proclaim our independence and take the hazard!"

Again a cheer and shout which the Vice-President's gavel could not quell. When the murmur at last died away the speaker's voice had dropped to low appealing tenderness.

"We do this, Senators, not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of our common country, not for our own pecuniary benefit, but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, which we will transmit unshorn to our children. We seek outside the Union that peace, with dignity and honor, which we can no longer find within.

"I trust I find myself a type of the general feeling of my constituents towards yours. I am sure I feel no hostility toward you, Senators from the North—"

He paused and swept the Northern tiers with a look of tender appeal.

"I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp discussion there may have been between us, to whom I can not now say in the presence of my God, I wish you well!"

Seward turned his head from the speaker, his eyes dimmed—the scheming diplomat and unscrupulous politician lost in the heart of the man for the moment.

"Such I am sure is the feeling of the people whom I represent toward those whom you represent. I but express their desire when I say I hope and they hope for peaceful relations with you, though we must part—"

He paused as if to suppress emotions too deep for words while a silence, intense and suffocating, held the crowd in a spell. The speaker's voice dropped to still lower and softer notes of persuasive tenderness as each rounded word of the next sentence fell slowly from the thin lips.

"If war must come, we can only invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered us from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear, and putting our trust in Him and in our firm hearts and strong arms we will vindicate the right as best we may—"

No cheer greeted this solemn utterance. In the pause which followed, the speaker deliberately gazed over the familiar faces of his Northern opponents and continued with a suppressed intensity of feeling that gripped his bitterest foe.

"In the course of my service here, associated at different times with a great variety of Senators, I see now around me some with whom I have served long. There have been points of collision, but, whatever offense there has been to me, I leave here. I carry with me no hostile remembrance. For whatever offense I may have given which has not been redressed, or for which satisfaction has not been demanded, I have, Senators, in this solemn hour of our parting to offer you my apology—"

The low musical voice died softly away in the silence of tears.

A woman sobbed aloud.

Socola bent toward his trembling companion and whispered:

"Who is she?"

Jennie brushed the tears from her brown eyes before replying:

"The Senator's wife. She's heart-broken over it all—didn't sleep a wink all night. I've been looking for her to faint every minute."

The leader closed his portfolio. His hollow cheeks, thin lips and white drawn face were clothed with an expression of sorrow beyond words as he slowly turned and left the scene of his life's triumphs.

The spell of his eloquence at last thrown off the crowd once more dissolved into hostile lowering groups.

Stern old Zack Chandler of Michigan collided with Jennie's father in the cloak room, his eyes red with wrath.

"Well, Barton," he growled, "after the damned insolence of that scene if the North don't fight, I'll be much mistaken—"

"You generally are, sir," Barton retorted.

"If they don't fight, by the living God, I'll leave this country and join another nation—the Comanche Indians preferred to this Government."

Barton glanced at his opponent and his heavy jaw closed with a snap.

"I trust, Senator," he said with deliberate venom, "you will not carry out that resolution—the Comanche Indians have already suffered too much from contact with the whites!"

Dick Welford heard the shot and gripped the fierce old Southerner's hand as Chandler turned on his heel and disappeared with an oath.

"You got him that time, Senator!"

Barton laughed with boyish glee.

"I did, didn't I? Sometimes we can only think of our best things when it's too late. But by Gimminy I got the old rascal this time, didn't I?"

"You certainly plugged him—what did you think of the speeches?"

"Clay said something! Davis is too slow. He's got no blood in his veins. I don't like him. He'll pull us back into the Union yet if we don't watch him. He's a reconstructionist at heart. The State of Mississippi is dragging him out of Washington by the heels. He makes me tired. The time for talk has passed. To your tents now, O Israel!"

Dick hurried to the gallery and watched Socola talking in his graceful Italian way with Jennie. He had hated this elegant foreigner the moment he had laid eyes on him. He made up his mind to declare himself before another sun set.

He ignored the Italian's existence.

"You are ready, Miss Jennie?"

She took Dick's proffered arm in silence and bowed to Socola who watched them go with a peculiar smile playing about his handsome mouth.

Jennie insisted on stopping at Senator Davis' home to tell his wife of the wonderful power with which his speech had swept the galleries.

The house was still, the library door open. The girl paused on the threshold in awe. The Senator's tall figure was lying prostrate across his desk, his thin hands clasped in prayer, his face buried in his arms. His lips were murmuring words too low to be heard until at last they swelled in sorrowful repetition:

"May God have us in his holy keeping and grant that before it is too late peaceful councils may prevail!"

The girl turned softly and left without a word.

---

CHAPTER III

A MIDNIGHT SESSION

The Secretary of War invited Socola to join him at the White House after the Cabinet meeting which President Buchanan had called at the unusual hour of ten at night. He had waited for more than two hours in the anteroom and still the Cabinet was in session. Without show of impatience he smoked cigar after cigar, flicked their ashes into the fireplace and listened with an expression of quiet amusement to the storm raging within while the sleet of a January blizzard rattled against the windows with increasing fury.

Once more the question of the little fort in the harbor of Charleston had plunged the discordant Cabinet of the dying administration into the convulsions of a miniature war.

The feeble old President, overwhelmed by the gathering storm, crouched in the corner by the fire. His emaciated figure was shrouded in a ridiculous old dressing-gown. Mentally and physically prostrate he sat shivering while his ministers wrangled.

He rose at last, shambled to the Cabinet table, and leaned his trembling hands on it for support.

"What can I do, gentlemen—what can I do? If Anderson hadn't gone into that fort at night, the State of South Carolina might not have seceded—"

Stanton shook his massive head with an expression of uncontrollable rage.

"Great God!"

The President continued in feeble, pleading tones:

"Now they tell me that unless Anderson withdraws his troops their presence will provoke bloodshed—"

"Let them fire on him if they dare!" shouted Stanton.

"I cannot plunge my country into fratricidal war. My sands are nearly run. I only ask of God that my sun may not set in a sea of blood—"

He paused and lifted his thin hands, trembling like two withered leaves of aspen in the winter's blast.

"What can I do?"

Stanton suddenly sprang from his seat and confronted the shivering old man.

"I'll tell you what you can not do!"

The President gasped for breath and listened helplessly.

"You can't yield that fort to the conspirators who demand it. Dare to do it, and I tell you, as the Attorney General of the United States, you are guilty of high treason—and by the living God you should be hung!"

The venerable Secretary of the Navy, Isaac Toucey, lifted his hand in protest. Stanton merely threw him a look of scorn, and shouted into the President's face:

"Your act could no more be defended than Benedict Arnold's!"

"And what say you, Holt?" the President asked, turning to his heavy-jawed Secretary of War.

"Send a ship to the relief of Sumter within twenty-four hours, and let South Carolina take the consequences—"

"Good!" Stanton cried.

Holt's crooked mouth was drawn in grim lines, and the left-hand corner was twisted into a still lower knot of ugly muscles. His furtive eyes beneath their shaggy brows glanced quickly around the table to see the effect of his patriotic stand.

The President turned to the white-haired Secretary of the Navy:

"And you, General Toucey?"

The venerable statesman from Connecticut bowed gravely to his Chief and spoke with quiet dignity.

"I would order Anderson to return at once to Fort Moultrie—"

Stanton smashed the table with his big fist.

"And you know that the State of South Carolina has dismantled Fort Moultrie?"

Toucey answered Stanton's bluster with quiet emphasis.

"I'm aware of that fact, sir!"

"And it makes no difference?"

"None whatever. Anderson left Fort Moultrie and moved into Fort Sumter without orders—"

A faint smile flickered about the drooping corners of Holt's mouth—

The speaker turned to Holt:

"As a matter of fact, he moved into that fort against the positive orders of your predecessor, James B. Floyd, the Secretary of War. As he went there without orders, and against orders, he should be ordered back forthwith—"

"With the look of a maddened tiger Stanton flew at him.

"And you expect to go back to Connecticut after making that statement?"

"I do, sir—"

"I couldn't believe it."

"And why, pray?"

"I asked the question in good faith, that I might know the character of the people of Connecticut, or your estimate of them."

The old man drew himself up with cold dignity.

"I have served the people of my State for over forty years—their Congressman, their Attorney General, their Governor, their Senator. I consult no upstart of your feeble record, sir, on any question of principle or policy!"

Stanton quailed a moment beneath the cold scorn of his antagonist, surprised that another man should dare to use his methods of invective.

He lifted his hands with a gesture of contempt.

"All I can say is, that if I should dare take that position and return to the State of Pennsylvania, I should expect to be stoned the moment I set foot on her soil, stoned through the State and flung into the river at Pittsburg with a stone around my neck—"

Toucey stared at his opponent.

"And in my opinion they would deserve well of their country for the performance!"

While his Cabinet wrangled, the feeble, old man in the faded wrapper shambled to the window and gazed with watery eyes on the swaying trees of the White House grounds. The sleet had frozen in shining crystals and every limb was hung in diamonds. The wind had risen to hurricane force, howling and shrieking its requiem through the chill darkness. A huge bough broke and fell to the ground with a crash that sent a shiver through his distracted soul.

He turned back to the table to hear their decision. It came with but one dissenting voice, Toucey, Secretary of the Navy.

"A ship be sent at once to the relief of Sumter."

With stubborn terror the President refused to sign the order for an armed vessel. At one o'clock they compromised on the little steamer, Star of the West, and Buchanan agreed that she should attempt to land provisions for Anderson's fifty-odd men.

Holt hurried from the council chamber at one o'clock with a smile of triumph playing about his sinister mouth. His plan had succeeded. He had worked Stanton as the legal adviser of the President exactly as he had foreseen. The little steamer would test the mettle of the men of South Carolina who were training their batteries on Fort Sumter. If they dared to fire on her—all right—the lines of battle would be drawn.

He seized Socola's arm.

"Come with me to the War Office."

Inside, he closed the door, inspected the room in every nook and corner for a possible eavesdropper, seated himself and leaned close to his attentive listener.

"I have established your character now through your connection with the Minister from Sardinia beyond the possibility of any doubt. Your position will not be called in question. You will appear in the South as the representative, unofficial and yet duly accredited, for King Victor Emmanuel. Your purpose will be, of course, the cultivation of friendly relations with the officials of the new Government looking to the day of its coming recognition—you understand?"

"Perfectly—"

"You have absolutely consecrated your life, and every talent, to your country?"

"Body and soul—"

The dark eyes flashed with the light of a religious fanatic.

"Good." The Secretary paused and studied his man a moment.

"I introduced you to the girl not merely to obtain an invaluable witness to your credentials should they be questioned—but for a double purpose."

Socola nodded.

"I guessed as much."

"She's bright, young, pretty, and you can pass the time pleasantly in her company. The association will place you in a strong position. Her father is a fool—the storm petrel of Secession. He has the biggest mouth in America, barring none. His mouth is so huge, they'll never find a muzzle big enough if they could get men enough around him to put it on. He's bound to land somewhere high in the councils of the coming Confederacy—"

"There'll be one?"

Holt smiled.

"You doubt it?"

"It may be bluster after all."

"Men of the Davis type don't bluster, my boy. They are to meet at Montgomery, Alabama, on February fourth. They'll organize the Cotton States into a Southern Confederacy. If they can win Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas, they may gobble Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri—all Slave States. If they get them all—they'll win without a fight, and reconstruct the Union on their own terms; if they don't—well, we'll see what we'll see—"

"And you wish?"

"That you get for me—and get quickly—inside information of what is done and what is proposed to be done at Montgomery. I want the names of every man discussed for high office among them, his chances of appointment, his friends, his enemies—why they are his friends, why they are his enemies. I want their plans, their prospects, their hopes, their fears, and I want this information quickly. You will be supplied with ample funds, and your report must be made to me in person. My tenure of this office will be but a few weeks longer—but you are my personal representative, you understand?"

"Quite."

"Your report must be in person to me, and to me alone."

"I understand, sir."

Socola rose, extended his hand, drew his cloak about his slender shoulders and passed out into the storm, his dark face lighted by a smile as he recalled the winsome face of Jennie Barton.

---

CHAPTER IV

A FRIENDLY WARNING

The withdrawal of the Southern Senators and Representatives from Congress produced in Washington the upheaval of a social earthquake.

An atmosphere of tears and ominous foreboding hung pall-like over the city's social life. Each step in the departure of wives and daughters was a pang.

Carriages drawn by sleek, high-bred horses dashed through the broad streets with excited haste. The black coachman on the box held his reins with a nervous grip that communicated itself to the horses. He had caught the excitement in the quivering social structure of which he was part. What he was really thinking down in the depths of his African soul only God could see. His dark face merely grinned in quick obedience to command.

From every house where these farewells were being said, a weeping woman emerged and waved a last adieu to the tear-stained faces at the window.

Wagons and carts lumbered through the streets on their way to the wharf or station, piled high with baggage.

Hotel-keepers stood in the doorway of their establishments with darkened brows. The glory of the past was departing. The future was a blank.

On the morning after his farewell address to the Senate, a messenger, who refused to give his name, was ushered into the library of Senator Davis.

The stately black butler bowed again with quiet dignity.

"Yo' name, sah? I—failed to catch it?"

The messenger lifted his hand:

"No name. Please say to the Senator that I came from an important official with a message of the gravest importance—I wish to see him alone at once—"

The faithful servant eyed his visitor with an ominous look. There was no question of his loyalty to the man he served.

"It's all right, Robert, I'm a friend of Senator Davis."

A moment's hesitation and the black man bowed with deference.

"Yassah—yassah—I tell him right away, sah. You sho' knows me anyhow, sah—"

The Senator was in bed suffering again from facial neuralgia. He rose promptly, dressed hastily but completely and carefully and extended both hands to his visitor.

"You have come to see me at an unusual hour, sir. It must be important—"

"Of the utmost importance, Senator. A high official in the confidence of the President sent me to inform you that Stanton, the Attorney General, is planning to issue a warrant for your arrest for high treason."

"Indeed?"

"You are advised to leave Washington on the first train."

A dry smile flickered about the corners of the Senator's strong mouth.

"Thank you. Please say to my friend that I appreciate the spirit that prompted his message. Ask him to say to Mr. Stanton that I have decided to remain in Washington a week. Nothing would please me better than to submit this issue to the courts for adjustment. He will find me at home every day and at all hours."

---

CHAPTER V

BOY AND GIRL

From the moment Dick Welford had seen Socola bowing and smiling before Jennie Barton he had hated the man. He hated foreigners on general principles, anyhow. This kind of foreigner he particularly loathed—the slender, nervous type which suggested over-refinement to the point of effeminacy. He had always hated slender, effeminate-looking men of the native breed. This one was doubly offensive because he was an Italian. How any woman with true womanly instincts could tolerate such a spider was more than he could understand.

Jennie Barton had always frankly said that she admired men of his own type. He was six feet one, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and weighed a hundred and ninety-six pounds at twenty-one years of age. He had always felt instinctively that he was exactly the man for Jennie's mate. She was nineteen, dark and slender, a bundle of quick, sensitive, nervous intelligence. Her brown eyes were almost black and her luxuriant hair seemed raven-hued beside his. He had always imagined it nestling beside his big blond head in perfect contentment since the first summer he had spent with Tom Barton at their cottage at the White Sulphur Springs.

He had taken it for granted that she would say yes when he could screw up his courage to speak. She had treated him as if he were already in the family.

"Confound it," he muttered, clenching his big fist, "that's what worries me! Maybe she just thinks of me as one of her brothers!"

It hadn't occurred to him until he saw the light kindle in her eyes at the sight of that smooth-tongued reptilian foreigner. He was on his way now to her house, to put the thing to the test before she could leave Washington. Thank God, the spider was tied down here at the Sardinian Ministry. He hoped Victor Emmanuel would send him as Consul to Shanghai.

Mrs. Barton met him at the door with a motherly smile.

"Walk right in the parlor, Dick. It's sweet of you to come so early to-day. We're all in tears, packing to go. Jennie'll be delighted to see you. Poor child—she's sick over it all."

Mrs. Barton pressed Dick's hand with the softest touch that reassured his fears. The only trouble about Mrs. Barton was she was gentle and friendly to everybody, black and white, old and young, Yankee or Southerner. She was even sorry for old John Brown when they hung him.

"Poor thing, he was crazy," she said tenderly. "They ought to have sent him to the asylum."

Try as he might, he couldn't fling off the impression of tragedy the meeting of Socola with Jennie had produced. He was in a nervous fit to see and tell her of his love. Why the devil hadn't he done so before anyhow? They might have been engaged and ready to be married by this time. They had met when she was sixteen.

Why on earth couldn't he throw off the fool idea that he was going to lose her? His big fist suddenly closed with resolution.

"I'll not lose her! I'll wring that viper's neck—I'll wade through blood and death and the fires of h—"

Just as he was plunging waist deep through the flames of the Pit, she appeared in the door, the picture of wistful, tender beauty.

He rose awkwardly and extended his hand.

"Good morning, Dick!"

"Good morning, Jennie—"

Her hand was hot, her eyes heavy with tears.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"As if you didn't know—I've been saying good-by to some of the dearest friends I've ever known. It's terrible. I just feel it's the end of the world—"

He started to say: "Don't worry, Jennie darling, you have me. I love you!" The thought of it made the cold beads of perspiration suddenly stand out on his forehead. It was one thing to think such things—another to say it aloud to a girl with Jennie's serious brown eyes.

She seemed terribly serious this morning and far away somehow. Never had he seen her so utterly lovely. The mood of tender seriousness made her more beautiful than ever. If he only dared to crush her in his arms and laugh the smiles back into her eyes.

When he spoke it was only a commonplace he managed to blurt out:

"So you're really going to-morrow?"

"Yes—we've telegraphed the boys to come home from school at once and join us in Montgomery."

He tried to say it again, but the speech turned out to be political, not personal.

"Of course Virginia'll stand by her Southern sisters, Jennie—"

"Yes—"

"It's just a few old moss-backs holding her. No army will ever march across her soil to fight a Southern State—"

"I hope not."

"Of course not. I'll meet them on the border with one musket anyhow—"

The girl was looking out the window at the slowly drizzling rain and made no answer. He flushed at her apparent indifference to his heroic stand.

"Don't you believe I would?"

"Would what, Dick?" she smiled, recovering herself from her reverie.

It was no use beating about the bush, trying to talk politics. He had to make the plunge.

He suddenly took her hand in his.

She threw him a startled look, sat bolt upright, made the faintest effort to draw her hand away, and blushed furiously.

He was in for it now. There was no retreat. He gripped with desperate earnestness, tried to speak, and choked.

He drew a deep breath, tried again and only squeezed her hand harder.

The girl began to smile in a sweet, triumphant way. It was nice, this conscious power over a big, stunning six-footer who grasped her hand as a drowning man a straw. The sense of her strength was thrilling.

She looked at him with demure reproach.

"Dick!"

He grinned sheepishly and clung to her hand.

"Yes—Jennie—"

"Do you know what you are doing?"

"No—but—I know—what—I'm—trying—to—do—and—I'm—going—to—do—it—"

Again his big hand crushed hers.

"You're trying to break every bone in my hand as near as I can make out—I'd like it back when you're through with it—"

He found his tongue at last:

"I—I—can't let you have it back, Jennie, I'm going to keep it forever—"

"Really?"

"Yes—I am. I—I love you—Jennie—don't you love me—just—a—little bit?"

The girl laughed.

"No!"

"Not the least—little—tiny—bit?"

"I don't think so—"

The hand slipped through his limp fingers and he stared at her in a hopeless, pitiful way.

Her heart went out in a wave of tender sympathy. She put her hand back in his in a wistful touch.

"I'm sorry, Dick dear, I didn't think you loved me in that way—"

"What did you think I was hanging round you so much for?"

"I knew you liked me, of course. And I like you—but I've never thought seriously about love."

"There's no other fellow?"

"Of course, not—"

"You liked that Socola, didn't you?"

"I liked him—yes—"

"I thought so."

"He's cultured, handsome, interesting—"

"He's a sissy!"

"Dick!"

"A little wizened-faced rat—the spider-snake! I could break his long neck. Yes—you do like him! I saw it when you met him. You're throwing me down because you met him!"

"Dick!"

"But he shan't have you, I tell you—I'll show him I could lick a thousand such sissies with one hand tied behind me."

The girl rose with dignity.

"Don't you dare to speak to me like that, sir—"

"You're going to see that fellow again—I'll bet you've got an engagement with him now—to-night—to-day!"

The slender figure rose.

"I'll see him if I please—when I please and where I please and I'll not consult you about it, Dick Welford—Good day!"

Trembling with anger the big, awkward boy turned and stumbled out of the house.

---

CHAPTER VI

GOD'S WILL

Dick Welford had played directly into the hands of his enemy. When Socola called at the Barton home to pay his respects to Miss Jennie and wish them health and happiness and success in their new and dangerous enterprise, he found the girl in a receptive mood. The accusation of interest had stimulated her to her first effort to entertain the self-poised and gentlemanly foreigner.

He turned to Jennie with a winning appeal in his modulated voice:

"Will you do me a very great favor, Miss Barton?"

"If I can—certainly," was the quick answer.

"I wish to meet your distinguished father. He is a great Southern leader. I have been commissioned by the Sardinian Ministry to cultivate the acquaintance of the leaders of the Confederacy. I am to make a report direct to the Court of King Emmanuel on the prospects of the South."

Jennie rose with a smile.

"With pleasure. I'll call father at once."

Barton was delighted at the announcement.

"Invite him to spend a week with us at Fairview," Jennie suggested.

"Good idea—we'll show him what Southern hospitality means!"

Burton grasped Socola's outstretched hand with enthusiasm.

"Permit me," he began in his grand way, "to extend you a welcome to the South. Your King is interested in our movement. It's natural. Europe must reckon with us from the first. Cotton is the real King. We are going to build on this staple an industrial empire whose influence will dominate the world. The sooner the political rulers realize this the better."

Socola bowed.

"I quite agree with you, Senator Barton. His Majesty King Victor Emmanuel has great plans for the future. He is profoundly interested in your movement. He does not believe that the map of Italy has yet been fixed. It will be quite easy to convince his brilliant, open mind that the boundaries of this country may be readjusted—"

"I shall be delighted to show you every courtesy within my power, sir," Barton responded. "You must go South with us to-morrow and spend a week at Fairview, our country estate. You must meet my grand old father and my mother and see the curse of slavery at its worst!"

Barton laughed heartily and slipped his arm persuasively about the graceful shoulders of his guest.

"I hadn't thought of being so honored, I assure you—"

He paused and looked at Jennie with a timid sort of appeal.

"Come with us—we'll be delighted to have you—"

"I'll enjoy it, I'm sure," he said hesitatingly. "We will reach Montgomery in time for the meeting of the Convention of Seceding States?"

"Certainly," Barton replied. "I'm already elected a delegate from my State. Her secession is but a question of days."

Socola's white, even teeth gleamed in a happy smile.

"I'll go with pleasure, Senator. You leave to-morrow?"

"The ten-twenty train for the South. You'll join our party, of course?"

"Of course."

With a graceful bow he hurried home to complete the final preparations for his departure. He walked with quick, strong step. And yet as he approached the door of the little house in the humbler quarter of the city his gait unconsciously slowed down.

He dreaded this last struggle with his mother. But it must come. He entered the modestly furnished sitting room and looked at her calm, sweet face with a sudden sinking. She would be absolutely alone in the world. And yet no harm could befall her. She was the friend of every human being who knew her. It was the agony of this parting he dreaded and the loneliness that would torture her in his absence.

He spoke with forced cheerfulness.

"Well, mater, it's all settled. I leave at ten-twenty to-morrow morning."

She rose and placed her hands on his shoulders. The tears blinded her.

"How little I thought when I taught your boyish lips to speak the musical tongue of Italy I was preparing this bitter hour for my soul! I begged your father to resign his consulship at Genoa and brought you home to teach you the great lesson—to love your country and reverence your country's God. And since your father's death the dream of my heart has been to see you a minister, teaching and uplifting the people into a higher and nobler life—"

"That is my aim, mater dear. I am consecrating body, mind and soul to the task now of saving the Union, an inheritance priceless and glorious to millions yet unborn. I'm going to break the chains that bind slaves. I'm going to break the brutal and cruel power of the Southern Tyranny that has been strangling the nation for forty years!"

His eyes flashed with the fire of fanatical enthusiasm.

He slipped his arm about his mother's slender waist, drew her to the window and pointed to the unfinished dome of the white, majestic capitol.

"See, mater dear, the sun is bursting through the clouds now and lighting with splendor the marble columns. Last night when the speeches were done and the crowds gone I stood an hour and studied the flawless symmetry of those magnificent wings and over it all the great solemn dome with its myriad gleaming eyes far up in the sky—and I wondered if God meant nothing big or significant to humanity when he breathed the dream of that poem in marble into the souls of our people! I can't believe it, dear. I stood and prayed while I dreamed. I saw in the ragged scaffolding and the big ugly crane swinging from its place in the sky the symbol of our crude beginnings—our ragged past. And then the snow-white vision of the finished building, the most majestic monument ever reared on earth to Freedom and her cause—and I saw the glory of a new Democracy rising from the blood and agony of the past to be the hope and inspiration of the world!

"You hate this masquerade—this battle name I've chosen. Forget this, dear, and see the vision your God has given to me. You've prayed that I might be His minister. And so I am—and so I shall be when danger calls; you dislike this repulsive mission on which I'm entering. Just now it's the one and only thing a brave man can do for his country. Forget that I'm a spy and remember that I'm fitted for a divine service. I speak two languages beside my own. Our people don't study languages. Few men of my culture and endowment will do this dangerous and disagreeable work. I rise on wings at the thought of it!"

The mother's spirit caught at last the divine spark from the soul of the young enthusiast. Her eyes were wide and shining without tears when she slipped both arms about his neck and spoke with deep tenderness.

"You have fully counted the cost, my son?"

"Yes."

"The lying, the cheating, the false pretenses, the assumed name, the trusting hearts you must betray, the men you must kill alone, sometimes to save your own life and serve your country's?"

"It's war, mater dear. I hate its cruelty and its wrongs. I'll do my best in these early days to make it impossible. But if it comes, I'll play the game with my life in my hands, and if I had a hundred lives I'd give them all to my country—my only regret is that I have but one—"

"How strange the ways of God!" the mother broke in. "He planted this love in your soul. He taught it to me and I to you and now it ends in darkness and blood and death—"

"But out of it, dear, must come the greater plan. You believe in God—you must believe this, or else the Devil rules the universe, and there is no God."

The mother drew the young lips down and kissed them tenderly.

"God's will be done, my Boy—it's the bitterness of death to me—but I say it!"

---

CHAPTER VII

THE BEST MAN WINS

Before Socola could purchase his ticket for the South, Senator Barton laid his heavy hand on his shoulder.

"I just ran down, sir, to ask you to wait and go in Senator Davis' party. He has been threatened with arrest by the cowards who are at the present moment in charge of the Government. He can't afford to leave town while there's a chance that so fortunate an event may be pulled off. I have decided to stay until Lincoln's inauguration. My wife and daughter will make you welcome at Fairview. And you'll meet my three boys. I'm sorry I can't be with you."

Socola's masked face showed no trace of disappointment. He merely asked politely:

"And the party of Senator Davis will start?"

"A week from to-day, sir—and my wife and daughter will accompany them—unless—of course—"

He laughed heartily.

"Unless the great Attorney General, Edwin M. Stanton, decides to arrest him—if he'll only do it!"

Socola nodded carelessly.

"I understand, Senator. A week from to-day. The same hour—the same train."

In a moment he had disappeared in the crowd and hurried to the office of the Secretary of War.

Holt received his announcement with a smile about the corners of his strong, crooked mouth.

"That's lucky. I'd rather you were with Davis ten to one. Amuse yourself for the week by getting all the information possible of their junta here—"

"Barton will stay until the inauguration—"

"Of course—a spy in the camp of the enemy. He could be arrested, but it's not wise under the circumstances—"

"You will not arrest Senator Davis?"

"Nonsense. Stanton's a fool. Nothing would please them better. I've convinced him of that. A wrangle in the courts now over such an issue would postpone its settlement indefinitely. The Supreme Court of the United States has sustained the South on every issue that has been raised. The North is leading a revolution. The South is entrenched behind the law. They can't be ousted by law. It can only be done by the bayonet—"

Holt paused and looked thoughtfully across the Potomac.

"Report to me daily—"

Socola silently saluted and left the office with his first feeling of suspicion and repulsion for his Chief. He didn't like the blunt, brutal way this Southern Democrat talked. He couldn't believe in his honesty. Beneath those bushy eyebrows burned a wolf's hunger for office and power. On the surface he was loyal to the Union. He wondered if he were not in reality playing a desperate waiting game, ready at the moment of the crisis to throw his information to either side? The air of Washington reeked with suspicion and double dealing.

"Oh, my Country," he murmured bitterly, "if ever true men were needed!"

He strolled through the street on which Senator Davis and Barton lived directly opposite each other. He would call on Jennie and express his regret that their party had been postponed. At the door he changed his mind. Too much attention at this stage of the game would not be wise. He passed on, glancing at the distinguished-looking group of men who were emerging from the Davis door.

He wondered what was going on in that home? It seemed impossible that Davis should be the leader of a Southern rebellion. Clay or Toombs, yes—but this man with his blood-marked history of devotion to the Union—this man with his proud record of constructive statesmanship as Senator and Secretary of War—it seemed preposterous!

Could he have heard the counsel Davis was giving at that moment to the excited men who made his unpretentious house their Mecca, he would have been still more astonished. For six days and nights with but a few hours snatched for sleep, he implored the excited leaders of Southern opinion to avoid violence, and be patient. The one note of hopefulness in his voice came with the mention of the new President-elect, Abraham Lincoln.

"Mr. Lincoln is a man of friendly, moderate opinions personally," he persistently advised. "He may be able to surround himself with a council of conservative men who will use their power to hold the radical wing of his party in check until by delay we can call a convention of all the States and in this national assembly find a solution short of bloodshed. We must try. We must exhaust every resource before we dream of war. We must accept war only when it is forced upon us by our enemies."

By telegrams and letters to every Southern leader he knew he urged delay, moderation, postponement of all action.

The week passed and the Cabinet of Buchanan had not dared accept the Southern leader's challenge to arrest and trial.

The Davis party had found their seats in the train for the South. Socola strolled the platform alone, waiting without sign of interest for the hour of departure.

Dick Welford arrived five minutes before the train left and extended his hand to Jennie.

"Forgive me, Jennie!"

With a bright smile she clasped his hand.

"Of course, Dick—I took your silly ravings too seriously."

"No—I was a fool. I'll make up for it. I'll go over now and shake hands with the reptile if you say so—"

"Nonsense—you'll not do anything of the sort. He's nothing to me. He's the guest of the South—that's all."

"Honest now, Jennie—you don't care for any other fellow?"

"Nor for you, either!" she laughed.

"Of course, I know that—but I can keep on trying, can't I?"

"I don't see how I can prevent it!"

Dick grinned good-naturedly and Jennie laughed again.

"You're in for a siege with me, I'll tell you right now."

"It's a free fight, Dick. I'm indifferent to the results."

"Then you don't mind if I win?"

"Not in the least. At the present moment I'm a curious spectator—that's all."

"Lord, I wish I were going with you—"

"I wish so, too—"

"Honest, Jennie?"

"Cross my heart—"

Dick laughed aloud.

"Say—I tell you what I'm going to do!"

"Yes?"

"If Virginia don't secede in ten days—I will. I'll resign my job here with old Hunter and join the Confederacy. I don't like this new clerkship business anyhow—expect me in ten days—"

Before Jennie could answer he turned suddenly and left the car.

At the end of the platform he ran squarely into Socola. He was about to pass without recognition, stopped on an impulse, and extended his hand:

"Fine day, Signor!"

"Beautiful, M'sieur," was the smooth answer.

Dick hesitated.

"I'm afraid I was a little rude the other day?"

"No offense, I'm sure, Mr. Welford—"

"Of course, you can guess I'm in love with Miss Barton—"

"I hadn't speculated on that point!" Socola laughed.

"Well, I've been speculating about you—"

"Indeed?"

"Yes—and I'm going to be honest with you—I don't like you—we're enemies from to-day. But I'll play the game fair and the best man wins—"

The two held each other's eye steadily for a moment and Socola's white teeth flashed.

"The best man wins, M'sieur!"

---

CHAPTER VIII

THE STORM CENTER

Socola hastened, through Jennie, to cultivate the acquaintance of Senator Davis.

"You'll be delighted with Mrs. Davis, too," the girl informed him with enthusiasm. "His second love affair you know—this time, late in life, he married the young accomplished granddaughter of Governor Howell of New Jersey. Their devotion is beautiful—"

The train had barely pulled out of the station before Socola found himself in a delightful conversation with the Senator. To his amazement he discovered that the Southerner was a close student of European statesmanship and well informed on the conditions of modern Italy.

"I am delighted beyond measure, Signor," he said earnestly, "to learn of the interest of your King in the South. I have long felt that Cavour was one of the greatest statesmen and diplomats of the world. His achievement in establishing the Kingdom of Sardinia in the face of the bitter rivalries and ambitions of Europe, to say nothing of the power of Rome, was in itself enough to mark him as the foremost man of his age."

"The King has great ambitions, Senator. Very shortly his title will be King of Italy. He dreams of uniting all Italians."

"And if it is possible, the Piedmontese are the people ordained for leadership in that sublime work—"

He looked thoughtfully out of the window at the Virginia hills and Socola determined to change the conversation. He was fairly well informed of the affairs in the little Kingdom on whose throne young Victor Emmanuel sat, but this man evidently knew the philosophy of its history as well as the facts. A question or two with his keen eye boring through him might lead to an unpleasant situation.

"Your family are all with you, Senator?" he asked pleasantly.

Instantly the clouds lifted from the pale, thoughtful face.

"Yes—I've three darling babies. I wish you to meet Mrs. Davis—come, they are in the next car."

In a moment the statesman had forgotten the storm of revolution. He was laughing and playing with his children. However stern and high his uncompromising opinions might be on public questions, he was wax in the hands of the two lovely boys who climbed over him and the vivacious little girl who slipped her arms about his neck. His respite from care was brief. At the first important stop in Virginia a dense crowd had packed the platforms. Their cries throbbed with anything but the spirit of delay and compromise.

"Davis!"

"Hurrah for Jefferson Davis!"

"Speech—speech!"

"Davis!"

"Speech!"

There was something tense and compelling in the tones of these cries. They rang as bugle calls to battle. In their hum and murmur there was more than curiosity—more than the tribute of a people to their leader. There was in the very sound the electric rush of the first crash of the approaching storm. The man inside who had led soldiers to death on battle fields felt it instantly and the smile died on his thin lips. The roar outside his car window was not the cry of a mob echoing the sentiments of a leader. It was the shrill imperial cry of a rising people creating their leaders.

From the moment he bowed his head and lifted his hand over the crowd that greeted him, hopeless sorrow filled his soul.

War was inevitable.

These people did not realize it. But he saw it now in all its tragic import. He had intended to counsel patience, moderation and delay. Before the hot breath of the storm he felt already in his face such advice was a waste of words. He would tell them the simple truth. He could do most good in that way. These fiery, impulsive Southern people were tired of argument, tired of compromise, tired of delay. They were reared in the faith that their States were sovereign. And these Virginians had good reason for their faith. The bankers of Europe had but yesterday refused to buy the bonds of the United States Government unless countersigned by the State of Virginia!

These people not only believed in the sovereignty of their States and their right to withdraw from the Union when they saw fit, but they could not conceive the madness of the remaining States attempting to use force to hold them. They knew, too, that millions of Northern voters were as clear on that point as the people of the South.

Their spokesman, Horace Greeley, in The Tribune had said again and again:

"If the Southern States are mad enough to withdraw from the Union, they must go. We cannot prevent it. Let our erring sisters go in peace."

The people before him believed that Horace Greeley's paper represented the North in this utterance. Davis knew that it was not true.

In a flash of clear soul vision he saw the inevitable horror of the coming struggle and determined to tell the people so.

The message he delivered was a distinct shock. He not only told them in tones of deep and tender emotion that war was inevitable, but that it would be long and bloody.

"We'll lick 'em in two months!" a voice yelled in protest and the crowd cheered.

The leader shook his fine head.

"Don't deceive yourselves, my friends. War once begun, no man can predict its end—"

"It won't begin!" another cried.

"You have convinced me to-day that it is now inevitable."

"The Yankees won't fight!" shouted a big fellow in front.

The speaker bent his gaze on the stalwart figure in remonstrance.

"You never made a worse mistake in your life, my friend. I warn you—I know these Yankees. Once in it they'll fight with grim, dogged, sullen, unyielding courage. We're men of the same blood. They live North, you South—that's all the difference."

At every station the same scene was enacted. The crowd rushed around his car with the sudden sweep of a whirlwind, and left for their homes with grave, thoughtful faces.

By three o'clock in the afternoon he was thoroughly exhausted by the strain. The eager crowds had sapped his last ounce of vitality.

The conductor of the train looked at him with pity and whispered:

"I'll save you at the next station."

The leader smiled his gratitude for the sympathy but wondered how it could be done.

At the next stop, the Senator had just taken his position on the rear platform, lifted his hand for silence and said:

"Friends and fellow citizens—"

The engine suddenly blew off steam with hiss and roar and when it ceased the train pulled out with a jerk amid the shouts and protests of the crowd. The grateful speaker waved his hand in regretful but happy farewell.

The conductor repeated the trick for three stations until the exhausted speaker had recovered his strength and then allowed him a few brief remarks at each stop.

From the moment the train entered the State of Mississippi, grim, earnest men in groups of two, three, four and a dozen stepped on board, saluted their Chief and took their seats.

When the engine pulled into the station at Jackson a full brigade of volunteer soldiers had taken their places in the ranks.

The Governor and state officials met their leader and grasped his hand.

"You have been commissioned, Senator," the Governor began eagerly, "as Major-General in command of the forces of the State of Mississippi. Four Brigadier-Generals have been appointed and await your assignment for duty."

The tall figure of the hero of Buena Vista suddenly stiffened.

"I thank you. Governor, for the high honor conferred on me. No service could be more congenial to my feelings at this moment."

The Governor waved his hand at the crowd of silent waiting men. "Your men are ready—the first question is the purchase of arms. I think a stand of 75,000 will be sufficient for all contingencies?"

The Senator spoke with emphasis:

"The limit of your purchases should be our power to pay—"

"You can't mean it!" the Governor exclaimed.

"I repeat it—the limit of your purchase of arms should be the power to pay. I say this to every State in the South. We shall need all we can get and many more I fear."

The Governor laughed.

"General, you overrate our risks!"

"On the other hand," Davis continued earnestly, "we are sure to underestimate them at every turn."

He paused, overcome with emotion.

"A great war is impending, Governor, whose end no man can foresee. We are not prepared for it. We have no arms, we have no ammunition and we have no establishments to manufacture them. The South has never realized and does not now believe that the North will fight her on the issue of secession. They do not understand the silent growth of the power of centralization which has changed the opinions of the North under the teaching of Abolition fanatics—"

Again he paused, overcome.

"God help us!" he continued. "War is a terrible calamity even when waged against aliens and strangers—our people are mad. They know not what they do!"

The new Commander hurried to Briarfield, his plantation home, to complete his preparations for a long absence.

Socola on a sudden impulse asked the honor of accompanying him. It was granted without question and with cordial hospitality.

It was an opportunity not to be lost. An intimate view of this man in his home might be of the utmost importance. He promised Jennie to hasten to Fairview when he had spent two days at Briarfield. Mrs. Barton was glad of the opportunity to set her house in order for her charming and interesting guest.

The Davis plantation was a distinct shock to his fixed New England ideas of the hellish institution of Slavery.

The devotion of these simple black men and women to their master was not only genuine, it was pathetic. He had never before conceived the abject depths to which a human being might sink in contentment with chains.

And he had come to break chains! These poor ignorant blacks kissed the hand that bound them and called him their best friend.

The man they called master actually moved among them, a minister of love and mercy. He advised the negroes about the care of their families in his long absence. He talked as a Hebrew Patriarch to his children. He urged the younger men and women to look after the old and helpless.

He was particularly solicitous about Bob, the oldest man on the place. Over and over again he enumerated the comforts he thought he might need and made provision to supply them. He sent him enough cochineal flannel for his rheumatism to wrap him four-ply deep. For Rhinah, his wife, he ordered enough flannel blankets for two families.

"Is there anything else you can think of, Uncle Bob?" he asked kindly.

The old man scratched his gray head and hesitated, looked into his master's face, smiled and said:

"I would like one er dem rockin' cheers outen de big house, Marse Jeff.—yassah!"

"Of course, you shall have it. Come right up, you and Rhinah, and pick out the two you like best."

With suppressed laughter Socola watched the old negroes try each chair in the hallway and finally select the two best rockers in the house.

The Southern leader was obviously careworn and unhappy. Socola found his heart unconsciously going out to him in sympathy.

Assuming carefully his attitude of foreign detached interest, the young man sought to draw him out.

"You have given up all hope of adjustment and reunion with the North?" he asked.

"No," was the thoughtful reply, "not until the first blood is spilled."

"Your people must see, Senator, that secession will imperil the existence of their three thousand millions of dollars invested in slaves?"

"Certainly they see it," was the quick answer. "Slavery can never survive the first shot of war, no matter which side wins. If the North wins, we must free them, or else maintain a standing army on our borders for all time. It would be unthinkable. Rivers are bad boundaries. We could have no others. Fools have said and will continue to say that we are fighting to establish a slave empire. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are seeking to find that peace and tranquillity outside the Union we have not been able to enjoy for the past forty years inside. If the Southern States enact a Constitution of their own, they will merely reaffirm the Constitution of their fathers with no essential change. The North is leading a revolution, not the South.

"Not one man in twenty down here owns a slave. The South would never fight to maintain Slavery. We know that it is doomed. We simply demand as the sons of the men who created this Republic, equal rights under its laws. If we fight, it will be for our independence as freemen that we may maintain those rights."

"I must confess, sir," Socola replied with carefully modulated voice, "that I fail to see as a student from without, why, if Slavery is doomed and your leaders realize that fact, a compromise without bloodshed would not be possible?"

"If Slavery were the only issue, it would be possible—although as a proud and sensitive people we propose to be the judge of the time when we see fit to emancipate our slaves. Abolition fanatics, whose fathers sold their slaves to us, can't dictate to the South on such a moral issue."

"I see—your pride is involved."

"Not merely pride—our self-respect. In 1831 before the Northern Abolitionists began their crusade of violence there were one hundred four abolition societies in America—ninety-eight of them in the South and only six in the entire North. But the South grew rich. At the bottom of our whole trouble lies the issue of sectional power. New England threatened to secede from the Union when we added the Territory of Louisiana to our domain, out of which we have carved seven great States. Slavery at that time was not an issue. Sectional rivalry and sectional hatred antedates even our fight against England for our freedom. Washington was compelled to warn his soldiers when they entered New England to avoid the appearance of offense. The Governor of Massachusetts refused to call on George Washington, the first President of the Union, when he visited Boston.

"And mark you, back of the sectional issue looms a vastly bigger one—whether the Union is a Republic of republics or a Centralized Empire. The millions of foreigners who have poured into the North from Europe during the past thirty years, until their white population outnumbers ours four to one, know nothing and care nothing about the Constitution of our fathers. They know nothing and care nothing for the principles on which the Federal Union was founded. They came from empires. They think as their fathers thought in Europe. And they are driving the sons of the old Revolution in the North into the acceptance of the ideas of centralized power. If this tendency continues the President of the United States will become the most autocratic ruler of the world. The South stands for the sovereignty of the States as the only bulwark against the growth of this irresponsible centralized despotism. The Democratic party of the North, thank God, yet stands with us on that issue. Our only possible hope of success in case of war lies in this fact—"

Socola suddenly started.

"Quite so—I see—The North may be divided, the South will be a unit."

"Exactly; they'll fight as one man if they must."

The longer Socola talked with this pale, earnest, self-poised man, the deeper grew the conviction of his utter sincerity, his singleness of purpose, his pure and lofty patriotism. His conception of the man and his aims had completely changed and with this change of estimate came the deeper conviction of the vastness of the tragedy toward which the Nation was being hurled by some hidden, resistless power. He had come into the South with a sense of moral superiority and the consciousness not only of the righteousness of his cause but the certainty that God would swiftly confound the enemies of the Union. He had waked with a shock to the certainty that they were entering the arena of the mightiest conflict of the century.

He girded his soul anew for the rôle he had chosen to play. The character of this Southern leader held for him an endless fascination. It was part of his mission to study him and he lost no opportunity. The greatest surprise he received during his stay was the day of the election of President at Montgomery. He had expected to be present at this meeting of the Southern Convention but, hearing that it would be held behind closed doors, had decided on his visit to Briarfield.

A messenger dashed up to the gate, sprang from his horse, hurried into the garden, thrust a telegram into the Senator's hand.

He opened it without haste, and read it slowly. His face went white and he crushed the piece of paper with a sudden gesture of despair. For a moment he forgot his guest, his head was raised as if in prayer and from the depths came the agonizing cry of a soul in mortal anguish:

"Lord, God, if it be possible let this cup pass from me!"

A moment of dazed silence and he turned to Socola. He spoke as a judge pronouncing his own sentence of death. His voice trembled with despair and his lips twitched with pitiful suffering.

"I have been elected President of the Southern Confederacy!"

He handed the telegram to Socola, who scanned it with thrilling interest. He had half expected this announcement from the first. What he could not dream was the remarkable way in which the Southern leader would receive it.

"You are a foreigner, Signor. I may be permitted to speak freely to you. You are a man of culture and sympathy and you can understand me. As God is my judge, I have neither desired nor expected this position. I took particular pains to forestall and make it impossible. But it has come. I am not a politician. I have never stooped to their tricks. I cannot lie and smile and bend to low chicanery. I hate a fool and I cannot hedge and trim and be all things to all men. I have never been a demagogue. I'm too old to begin. Other men are better suited to this position than I—" He paused, overcome. Socola studied him with surprise.

"Permit me to say, sir," he ventured disinterestedly, "that such a spirit is evidence that your people have risen to the occasion and that their choice may be an inspiration."

The leader's eye suddenly pierced his guest's.

"God knows what is best. It may be His hand. It may be that I must bow to His will—"

Again he paused and looked wistfully at Socola's youthful face.

"You are young, Signor—you do not know what it is to yield the last ambition of life! I have given all to my country for the past years. I have sacrificed health and wealth and every desire of my soul—peace and contentment here with those I love! When I saw this mighty struggle coming, I feared a tragic end for my people. I fear it now. The man who leads her armies will win immortality no matter what the fate of her cause—I've dreamed of this, Signor—but they've nailed me to the cross!"

He called his negroes together and made them an affectionate speech. They responded with deep expressions of their devotion and their faith. With the greatest sorrow of life darkening his soul he left next day for his inauguration at Montgomery.

---

CHAPTER IX

THE OLD RÉGIME

Socola left Briarfield with the assurance of the President-elect of the Confederacy that he might spend a week with the Bartons and yet be in ample time for the inauguration at Montgomery.

He boarded the steamer at the Davis landing and floated lazily down to Baton Rouge.

From Briarfield he carried an overwhelming impression of the folly of Slavery from its economic point of view. The thing which amazed his orderly New England mind was the confusion, the waste, the sentimental extravagance, the sheer idiocy of the slave system of labor as contrasted with the free labor of the North.

The one symbol before his vivid imagination was the sight of old Uncle Bob and Aunt Rhinah seated in their rocking chairs gravely listening to the patriarchal farewell of their master. The ancient seers dreamed of Nirvana. These two wonderful old Africans had surely found it in the new world. No wave of trouble could ever roll across their peaceful breasts so long as their lord and master lived. He was their king, their protector, their physician, their almoner, their friend. The burden of life was on his shoulders, not on theirs. Their working days were over. He must feed and clothe, house and care for their worthless bodies unto the end. And the number of these helpless ones were constantly increased.

He marveled at the folly that imagined such a system of labor possible in a real world where the iron laws of economic survival were allowed free play. He ceased to wonder why it still flourished in the South. The South was yet an unsettled jungle of bewildering tropical beauty. One might travel for miles and hundreds of miles without the sight of a single important town. Vast reaches of untouched forests stretched away in all directions. Apparently the foot of man had never pressed them. Rich plantations of thousands of acres were only scratched in spots to yield their marvelous harvests of cotton and cane, of rice and corn.

The idea of defending such a territory, extending over thousands of miles, from the invading hosts of the rich and densely populated North was preposterous. His heart leaped with the certainty of swift and sure triumph for the Union should the question be submitted to the test of the sword.

As the boat touched her landing at Baton Rouge, Jennie waved her welcome from the shore. The graceful figure of her younger brother stood straight and trim by her side in his new volunteer uniform. Whatever the political leaders might think or do, these Southern people meant to fight. There was no mistaking that fact. With every letter to his Chief in Washington he had made this plain. The deeper he had penetrated the lower South the more overwhelming this conviction had become.

For the moment he put the thought of his tragic mission out of his heart. There was something wonderful in the breath of this early Southern spring. The first week in February and flowers were blooming on every lawn of every embowered cottage and every stately house! The song of birds, the hum of bees, the sweet languor of the perfumed air found his inmost soul. The snows lay cold and still and deathlike over the Northern world.

This was fairyland.

And the Bartons' home on the banks of the river was the last touch that completed the capture of his imagination. Through a vista of overhanging boughs he caught the flash of its white fluted pillars in the distance. The broad verandas were arched with climbing roses. In the center of the sunlit space in front a fountain played, the splash of its cooling waters keeping time to the song of mocking birds in shrubs and trees. In the spacious grounds which swept to the water's edge more than a thousand magnificent trees spread their cooling shade. The white rays of the Southern sun shot through them like silver threads and glowed here and there in the changing, shimmering splotches on the ground.

And everywhere the grinning faces of slowly moving negroes. The very rhythm of their lazy walk seemed a part of the landscape.

This fairy world belonged to his country. His heart went out in renewed devotion. Not one shining Southern star should ever be torn from her diadem! He swore it.

For three days he bathed in the beauty and joy of a Southern home. He saw but little of Jennie. The boys absorbed him. They were eager for news. They plied him with a thousand questions. Tom was going to join the navy, Jimmie and Billy the army.

"Would the United States Army stand by the old flag?" Tom asked with painful eagerness.

Socola was non-committal.

"As a rule the sailor is loyal to the flag of his ship. It's the symbol of home, of country, of all he holds dear."

"That's so, too," Tom answered thoughtfully. "Well, we'll build a navy. We built the old one. We can build a new one!"

The last night he spent at Fairview was one never to be forgotten. It gave him another picture of the old régime. They sat on the great pillared front porch looking out on the silvery surface of the moonlit river. Jennie's grandfather, Colonel James Barton, a stately man of eighty-five, who had led a regiment with Jefferson Davis in the Mexican War, though at that time long past the age of military service, honored them with his presence to a late hour.

His eyes were failing but his voice was stentorian. Its tones had been developed to even deeper power during the past ten years owing to the deafness of his wife. This beautiful old woman sat softly rocking beside the Colonel, answering in gentle monosyllables the questions he roared into her ears.

To escape the volume of the Colonel's conversation Socola asked Jennie to walk to the river's edge.

They sat down on a bench perched high on the bluff which rose abruptly from the water at the lower end of the grounds. The scene was one of memorable beauty.

He laughed at the folly of his schemes to learn the inner secrets of the South. These people had no secrets. They wore their hearts on their sleeves. He had only to ask a question to receive the answer direct without reserve.

"Your three younger brothers will fight for the South, of course, Miss Jennie?"

"Of course—I only wish I were a man!"

"You have an older brother in New Orleans, I believe?"

"Judge Barton, yes."

"He, too, will enter the army?"

The girl drew a deep breath and hesitated.

"He says he will not. He is bitterly opposed to my father's views."

Socola's eyes sparkled.

"He is for the Union then?"

"Yes."

"He is a man of decided views and character I take it."

"Yes—as firm and unyielding in his position as my father on the other side."

"You will be very bitter towards him if war should come?"

"Bitter?" A little sob caught her voice. "He is my Big Brother. I love him. It would break my heart—that's all—but I'll love him always."

Her tones were music, her loyalty to her own so sweet in its simplicity, so utterly charming, he opened his lips to speak the first words to test her personal attitude toward him. A flirtation would be delightful with such a girl. And Mr. Dick Welford was a fearful temptation. He put the thought out of his heart. She was too good and fine to be made a pawn in such a game. Beside it was utterly unnecessary.

He had gotten exactly the information about this older brother in New Orleans he desired and sat in brooding silence.

Jennie rose suddenly.

"Oh, I forgot—I must go in. My maids are waiting for me, I've an affair to settle between them before they go to bed."

Socola accompanied her to the door and turned again on the lawn to enjoy the white glory of the Southern moon. The lights were still twinkling in the long rows of negro cabins that lined the way to the overseer's house. Through the shadows of the trees he could see the dark figures in the doorways of their cabins silhouetted against the lighted candles in the background.

He strolled leisurely into the lower hall. The door of the library was open. He paused at the scene within. A group of four little negro girls surrounded Jennie. She was reading the Bible to them.

"Can't you say your prayers together to-night?" the young mistress asked.

The kinky heads shook emphatically.

Lucy couldn't say hers with Amy:

"'Cause she ain't got no brother and sister to pray for."

Maggie couldn't say hers with Mandy:

"'Cause she ain't got no mother and father."

So each repeated her prayer alone and stood before their little mistress who sat in judgment on their day's deeds.

Lucy had jabbed a carving knife into Amy's arm in a fit of temper. Her prayer had made no mention of this important fact. The judge gave a tender lecture on the need of repentance. The little sullen black figure hung back stubbornly for a moment and walled her eyes at her enemy. A sudden burst of tears and they were in each other's arms, crying and begging forgiveness. And then they filed out, one by one.

"Good night, Miss Jennie!"

"Good night!"

"God bless you, Miss Jennie—"

"I'll never be bad no mo'!"

He had come to break the chains that cut through human flesh and he had found this—great God!

For hours he lay awake, dreaming with wide staring eyes of the long blood-stained history of human Slavery and its sharp contrast with the strange travesty of such an institution which the South was giving to the world.

He had barely lost consciousness when he leaped to the floor, roused by loud voices, tramping feet and the flash of weird lights on the lawn. Growls and long calls echoed from point to point on the spacious grounds, hulloes and echoing answers and the tramp of many feet.

Some horrible thing had happened—sudden death, murder or war had broken out. A voice was screaming from the balcony aloft that sounded like the trumpet of the arch-angel calling the end of time.

He listened.

It was old Colonel Barton yelling at the sleepy negroes. In heaven's high name what could they be doing?

Socola dressed hastily and rushed down-stairs. Jennie and the boys appeared almost at the same moment.

"What is it?" Socola asked excitedly. "War has been declared? The slaves have risen?"

Jennie laughed.

"No—no! Grandmamma smells a smell. She thinks something is burning somewhere."

"Oh—"

The whole place, house, yard, grounds, outhouses, swarmed with bellowing negroes. Those that were not bellowing were muttering in sleepy, quarrelsome protest.

And they all carried candles to look for a fire in the dark!

There were at least seventy—two-thirds of them too old or too young to be of any service, but they belonged to the house.

The old Colonel's voice could be heard a mile. In his nightgown he was roaring from the balcony, giving his orders for the busy crowd hunting for fire with their candles flickering in the shadows.

Old Mrs. Barton, serenely deaf, was of course oblivious of the sensation she had created. The loss of her hearing had rendered doubly acute her sense of smell. Candles had to be taken out of her room to be snuffed. Lamps were extinguished only on the portico or on the lawn. Violets she couldn't endure. A tea rose was never allowed in her room. Only one kind of sweet rose would she tolerate at close range.

In the mildest voice she was suggesting places to be searched.

Far out at the negro quarters the candle brigade at length gathered—the flickering lights closing in to a single point one by one.

The smell was found.

A family had been boiling soap—a slave-ridden plantation was a miniature world which must be practically self-supporting. There could be no economy of labor by its scientific division. Around the soap pot the negro woman had swept some woolen rags. They were smoldering there and the faint odor had been wafted to the great house.

Socola couldn't sleep. All night long he could hear that wild commotion—the old Colonel's voice roaring from the balcony and seventy sleepy, good-for-nothing negroes with lighted candles looking for a fire in the dark. When at last he was tired of laughing at the ridiculous picture, his foolish fancy took another turn and fixed itself again on old Bob and Aunt Rhinah in their rocking chairs, swathed in cochineal flannel.

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CHAPTER X

THE GAUGE OF BATTLE

Socola found the little town of Montgomery, Alabama, breathing under a suppression of emotion that was little short of uncanny on the day Jefferson Davis was inaugurated President.

The streets were crowded to suffocation and tents were necessary to accommodate the people who could not be housed.

He was surprised at the strange quiet which the spirit of the new President had communicated to the people. There was no loud talk, no braggadocio, no threats, no clamor for war. On the contrary there had suddenly developed an overwhelming desire for a peaceful solution of the crisis.

The Convention which had unanimously elected Jefferson Davis, President, and Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President, had relegated the hot heads and fire eaters to the rear.

Three great agitators had really created the new nation, William L. Yancey of Alabama, Robert Toombs of Georgia and Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina. And they were consumed with ambition for the Presidency.

Toombs was the most commanding figure among the uncompromising advocates of secession in the South—an orator of consummate power, a man of wide learning and magnetic personality. William L. Yancey was as powerful an agitator as ever stirred the souls of an American audience since the foundation of our Republic. Barnwell Rhett of the Charleston Mercury was the most influential editor the country had ever produced.

Yet the suddenness with which these fiery leaders were dropped in the hour of crisis was so amazing to the men themselves they had not yet recovered sufficient breath to begin complaints.

Toombs destroyed what chance he ever had by getting drunk at a banquet the night before the Convention met. William L. Yancey's turbulent history ruled him out of consideration. He had killed his father-in-law in a street brawl. Rhett's extreme views had been the bugle call to battle but something more than sound was needed now.

Toombs was dropped even for Vice-President for Alexander H. Stephens, the man who had pleaded in tears with his State not to secede.

The highest honor had been forced on the one man in all the South who most passionately wished to avoid it.

So acute was the consciousness of tragedy there was scarcely a ripple of applause at public functions where Socola had looked for mad enthusiasm.

The old Constitution had been reënacted with no essential change. The new President had even insisted that the Provisional Congress retain the old flag as their emblem of nationality with only a new battle flag for use in case of war. The Congress over-ruled him at this point with an emphasis which they meant as a rebuke to his tendency to cling to the hope of reconciliation.

It was exactly one o'clock on Monday, February 18, 1861, that Jefferson Davis rose between the towering pillars of the State Capitol in Montgomery and began his inaugural address. It was careful, moderate, statesmanlike, and a model of classic English. The closing sentence swept the crowd.

"It is joyous in the midst of perilous times to look thus upon a people united in heart, whose one purpose of high resolve animates and actuates the whole; where the sacrifices to be made are not weighed in the balance against honor, and right, and liberty and equality."

The cheer that greeted his appeal rose and fell again and again the third time with redoubled power and enthusiasm.

The President-elect stepped forward, placed his hand on the open Bible, and took the oath of office. As the last word fell from his white lips cannon thundered a salute from the hill crest and the great silk ensign of the South was slowly lifted by the hand of the granddaughter of President Tyler.

As the breeze unrolled its huge red, white and blue folds against the shining Southern skies the crowd burst into hysterical applause.

A Nation had been born whose history might be brief, but the people who created it and the leader who guided its destiny were the pledge of its immortality.

Socola found no difficulty in possessing himself of every secret of the new Government. What was not proclaimed from the street corners and shouted from the housetops, the newspapers printed in double leads. The new Government had yet to organize its secret service.

The President addressed himself with energy to the task which confronted him. But seven States had yet enrolled in the Confederacy. Of four more he felt sure. The first attempt to coerce a Southern State by force of arms would close the ranks with Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas by his side. Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri were peopled by the South and the institution of Slavery bound them in a common cause.

And yet the defense of these eleven Southern States with their five million white population and four million blacks was a task to stagger the imagination of the greatest statesman of any age. This vast territory would present an open front on land of more than a thousand miles without a single natural barrier. Its sea coast presented three thousand miles of water front—open to the attack of the navy. This enormous coast of undefended shore was pierced by river after river whose broad, deep waters would carry the gunboats of an enemy into the heart of the South.

The audacity of our fathers in challenging the power of Great Britain was reasonable in comparison with the madness of the South's challenge to the North. Three thousand miles of storm-tossed ocean defended our Revolutionary ancestors from the base of the enemy's supplies. Three thousand miles of undefended coast invited the attack of the U. S. Navy, while twenty million Northerners stood with their feet on the borders of the South ready to advance without the possibility of hindrance save the bare breasts of the men who might oppose them.

The difference between the sections in material resources was absurd. The North was rich and powerful. Her engines of war were exhaustless and under perfect control. The railroads of the South were few and poorly equipped, with no work shops from which to renew their equipment when exhausted. The railroad system of the entire country was absolutely dependent on the North for supplies. The Missouri River was connected with the Northern seaboard by the finest system of railways in the world, with a total mileage of over thirty thousand. Its annual tonnage was thirty-six million and its revenue valued at four thousand millions of dollars. The annual value of the manufactures of the North was over two thousand millions, and their machinery was complete for the production of all the material of war. Her ships sailed every sea and she could draw upon the resources of the known world. Her manufacturing power compared to the South was five hundred to one.

No leader in the history of his race was ever confronted by such insuperable difficulties as faced Jefferson Davis.

He had been called to direct the government of a proud, sensitive, jealous people thrown without preparation into a position which threatened their existence, without an army, without arms, or the means to manufacture them, without even powder, or the means to make it, or the material out of which it must be made, without a navy or a single ship-yard in which to build one, and three thousand miles of coast to be defended against a navy which had whipped the greatest maritime nation of the world. His genius must meet every difficulty and supply every want or his Confederacy would fall at the first shock of war.

The one tremendous and apparently insuperable difficulty in case of war was the lack of a navy. A navy could not be built in a day, or a year or two years, were the resources of the Confederacy boundless. The ships of war now in the possession of the United States were of incalculable power in such a crisis. The South was cut in every quarter by navigable rivers. Many of their waters opened on Northern interiors accessible to great workshops from which new gunboats could be built with rapidity and launched against the South. The Mississippi River, navigable for a thousand miles, flowed through the entire breadth of the Confederacy with its approaches and its mouth in the hands of the North. Both the Tennessee and the Cumberland rivers had their mouths open to Northern frontiers and were navigable in midwinter for transports and gunboats which could pierce the heart of Tennessee and Alabama.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the first purpose of the President of the Confederacy was to secure peace by all means consistent with public honor and the trust imposed on him by the people.

His first official act was the dispatch of Confederate Commissioners to Washington to treat for peace.

The hope that they would be received with courtesy and consideration was a reasonable one. The greatest newspapers of the North were outspoken in their opposition to the use of arms against any State of the Union.

The New York Tribune, the creator of Lincoln's party, led in this opposition to the use of force. The Albany Argus and the New York Herald were equally emphatic. Governor Seymour of New York boldly declared in a great mass meeting his unalterable opposition to coercion. The Detroit Free Press suggested that a fire would be poured into the rear of any troops raised to coerce a State. It was already known that Mr. Lincoln would not advocate coercion in his inaugural.

Stephen A. Douglas, leader of the millions of the Northern Democracy, offered a resolution in the Senate of the United States recommending the immediate withdrawal of the garrisons from all forts within the limits of the States which had seceded except those at Key West and Dry Tortugas needful for coaling stations.

"I proclaim boldly," declared the Senator from Illinois, "the policy of those with whom I act. We are for peace!"

Socola reported to his Chief in Washington that nothing was more certain than that Jefferson Davis hoped for reunion, with guarantees against aggression by the stronger section of the Union.

Buchanan had agreed to receive the Southern Commissioners, and sent a message to Congress announcing their presence and their overtures.

The Commissioners found Washington seething with passion and trembling with excitement. Buchanan had collapsed in terror, fearing each hour to hear that his home had been sacked and burned at Wheatland.

But the Southern leaders' hope of peaceful settlement was based on a surer foundation than the shattered nerves of the feeble old man in the White House. Joseph Holt, the Secretary of War, was a Southern Democrat born in Kentucky, and from the State of Mississippi. Holt had called on Davis in Washington and assured him of his loyalty to the South and her people. The President of the Confederacy knew of his consuming personal ambitions and had assured him of his influence to secure generous treatment.

But the Secretary of War had received information from the South. He had studied the situation carefully. He believed his chances of advancement in the North a better risk. The new Government had ignored him in the selection of a Cabinet—and with quick decision he cast his fortunes with the Union. That he had deceived Davis and Clay, to whom he had given his pledge of Southern loyalty, was a matter of no importance, save that these two men, who alone knew his treachery, were marked for his vengeance.

Little could they dream in this hour the strange end toward which Fate was even now hurrying them through the machinations of this sullen, envious Southern renegade.

The Secretary of War placed his big fist on the throat of the trembling President, and the Peace Commissioners could not reach the White House or its councils.

They were forced to await the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.

Jefferson Davis gave himself body and soul to the task of preparing his over-sanguine, credulous people for the possible tragedy of war.

General Beauregard was ordered to command the forces in South Carolina, and erect batteries for the defense of Charleston and the reduction of Fort Sumter in case of an attempt to reënforce it. This grim fort, in the center of the harbor of the chief Southern Atlantic city, commanded the gateway of the Confederacy. If it should be reënforced, the Confederate Government might be strangled by the fall of Charleston, and the landing of an army even before a blow could be struck.

Captain Raphael Semmes was sent North to buy every gun in the market. He was directed to secure machinery, and skilled workingmen to man it, for the establishment of arsenals and shops, and above all to buy any vessel afloat suitable for offensive or defensive work. Not a single ship of any description could be had, and the intervention of the authorities finally prevented the delivery of a single piece of machinery or the arms he had purchased.

Major Huse was sent to Europe on the third day after the inauguration at Montgomery on a similar mission.

General G. W. Rains was appointed to establish a manufactory for ammunition. His work was an achievement of genius. He created artificial niter beds, from which sufficient saltpeter was obtained, and within a year was furnishing the finest powder.

General Gorgas was appointed Chief of Ordnance. There was but one iron mill in the South which could cast a cannon, and that was the little Tredegar works at Richmond, Virginia. The State of Virginia had voted against secession and it would require the first act of war against her Southern sisters to bring her to their defense.

The widespread belief in the North that the South had secretly prepared for war, was utterly false, and yet the impression was of the utmost importance to the President of the Confederacy. It gave his weak government a fictitious strength, and gave him a brief time in which to prepare his raw recruits for their first battle.

Day and night he prayed for peace at any sacrifice save that of honor. The first bloodshed would be the match in the powder magazine. He pressed his Commissioners in Washington for haste.

The inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln had been so carefully worded, its utterances so conservative and guarded, his expressions of good will toward the South so surprisingly emphatic, that Davis could not believe an act of aggression which would bring bloodshed could be committed by his order.

And yet day dragged after day with no opportunity afforded his Commissioners to treat with the new Administration save through the undignified course of an intermediary. The Southern President ordered that all questions of form or ceremony be waived.

Seward, the Secretary of State, gave to these Commissioners repeated assurances of the peaceful intention of the Government at Washington, and the most positive promise that Fort Sumter would be evacuated. He also declared that no measure would be instituted either by the Executive or Congress changing the situation except on due notice given the Commissioners.

These assurances were accepted by the Confederate President in absolute good faith. And yet early in April the news was flashed to Montgomery that extraordinary preparations were being made in the Northern ports for a military and naval expedition against the South. On April the fifth, sixth and seventh, a fleet of transports and warships with shotted guns, munitions and military supplies sailed for Charleston.

The Commissioners in alarm requested an answer to their proposals. To their amazement they were informed that the President of the United States had already determined to hold no communication with them whatever in any capacity or listen to any proposals they had to make.

On Beauregard's report to them that Anderson was endeavoring to strengthen his position instead of evacuating the Fort the Commissioners again communicated with Mr. Seward.

The wily Secretary of State assured them that the Government had not receded from his promise. On April seventh Mr. Seward sent them this message:

"Faith as to Sumter fully kept: wait and see."

His war fleet was already on the high seas, their black prows pointed southward, their one hundred and twenty guns shotted, their battle flags streaming in the sky!

Lincoln's sense of personal honor was too keen to permit this crooked piece of diplomacy to stain the opening of his administration. He dispatched a special messenger to the Governor of South Carolina and gave notice of his purpose to use force if opposed in his intention of supplying Fort Sumter.

On the eve of the day the fleet was scheduled to arrive this notice was delivered. But a storm at sea had delayed the expedition and Beauregard asked the President of the Confederacy for instructions.

His Cabinet was called, and its opinion was unanimous that Fort Sumter must be reduced or the Confederacy dissolved. There was no choice.

Their President rose, his drawn face deadly pale:

"I agree with you, gentlemen. The order of the sailing of the fleet was a declaration of war. The responsibility is on their shoulders, not ours. To juggle for position as to who shall fire the first gun in such an hour is unworthy of a great people and their cause. A deadly weapon has been aimed at our heart. Only a fool would wait until the shot has been fired. The assault has already been made. It is of no importance who shall strike the first blow or fire the first gun."

With quick decision he seized his pen and wrote the order for the reduction of Fort Sumter.

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CHAPTER XI

JENNIE'S VISION

Wild rumors of bombardment held Charleston in a spell.

Jennie Barton sat alone on the roof of her aunt's house at two o'clock on the morning of April 13. The others had gone to bed, certain that the rumors were false. She had somehow felt the certainty of the crash.

Seated beside the brick coping of the roof she leaned the strong little chin in her hands, waited and watched. Lights were flickering around the shore batteries like fireflies winking in the shadows of deep woods. Her three brothers were there. She might look on their dead faces to-morrow. Her father had rushed to Charleston from Washington at the first news of the sailing of the fleet. He had begged and pleaded with General Beauregard to reduce the Fort immediately, with or without orders from Davis.

"For God's sake, use your discretion as Commanding General and open fire. If that fleet reaches Sumter the cause of the Confederacy is lost. Old Davis is too slow. He's still crying peace, peace, when there is no peace. The war has begun!"

The General calmly shook his head and asked for instructions.

Besides losing her brothers, she might be an orphan to-morrow. Her father was quite capable of an attack on Sumter without orders. And if the bombardment should begin he would probably be roaming over the harbor from fort to fort, superintending the job under the guns of both sides.

"If Anderson does not accept the terms of surrender offered he will be fired on at four o'clock." Jennie repeated the headlines of the extra with a shiver.

The chimes of St. Michael's struck three. The minutes slowly dragged. The half hour was sung through the soft balmy air of the Southern spring.

Dick Welford, too, was behind one of those black guns on the shore. How handsome he had looked in his bright new uniform! He was a soldier from the crown of his blond head to the soles of his heavy feet. He had laughed at danger. She had liked him for that. He hadn't posed. He hadn't asked for sympathy or admiration. He just marched to his duty with the quick, firm step of the man who means business.

She was sorry now she hadn't told him how much she liked and admired him. She might not have another chance—

"Nonsense, of course I will!" she murmured with a toss of her brown head.

A dog barked across the street, and a wagon rattled hurriedly over the cobblestones below. A rooster crowed for day.

She looked across the way, and a dark group of whispering women were huddled in a corner on the roof, their gaze fixed on Sumter.

Another wagon rumbled heavily over the cobbles, and another, and another. A blue light flamed from Fort Sumter, blinking at intervals. Anderson was signaling someone. To the fleet that lay on the eastern horizon beyond the bar, perhaps.

The chimes of St. Michael struck the fatal hour of four. Their sweet notes rang clear and soft and musical over the dim housetops just as they had sung to the sleeping world through years of joyous peace.

Jennie sprang to her feet and strained her eyes toward the black lump that was Sumter out in the harbor. She waited with quick beating heart for the first flash of red from the shore batteries. It did not come. Five minutes passed that seemed an hour, and still no sound of war.

Only those wagons were rumbling now at closer intervals—one after the other in quick succession. They were ammunition trains! The crack of the drivers' whips could be heard distinctly, and the cries of the men urging their horses on. The noise became at last a dull, continuous roar.

The chimes from the old church tower again sang the half hour and then it came—a sudden sword leap of red flame on the horizon! A shell rose in the sky, glowing in pale phosphorescent trail, and burst in a flash of blinding flame over the dark lump in the harbor. The flash had illumined the waters and revealed the clear outlines of the casemates with their black mouths of steel gaping through the portholes. A roar of deep, dull thunder shook the world.

Jennie fell on her knees with clasped hands and upturned face. Her lips were not moving, and no sound came from the little dry throat, but from the depths of her heart rose the old, old cry of love.

"Lord have mercy on my darling brothers, and keep them safe—let no harm come to them—and Dick, too—brave and strong!"

The house below was stirring with the rush of hurrying feet in the corridors and the clatter on the narrow stairs that led to the roof. They crowded to the edge and gazed seaward. The hum of voices came now from every house. Women were crying. Some were praying. Men were talking in low, excited tones.

Jennie paid no attention to the people about her.

Her eyes were fixed on those tongues of flame that circled Sumter.

Anderson was firing now, his big guns flashing their defiant answer to Beauregard's batteries. Jennie watched the lurid track of his shells with sickening dread.

A man standing beside her in the gray dawn spoke.

"A waste of ammunition!"

The cannon boomed now with the regular throb of a great human pulse. The sobs and excited cries and prayers of women had become a part of the weird scene.

A young mother stood beside Jennie with a baby boy in her arms. He was delighted with the splendid display and the roar of the guns.

He pointed his fingers to the circling shells and cried:

"'Ook, mamma, 'ook!"

The mother made no answer. Only with her hungry eyes did she follow their track to the shore. Her mate was there.

The baby clapped his hands and caught the rhythm of the throb and roar of the cannon in his little voice:

"Boom!—Boom!"

The sun rose from the sea, a ball of dull red fire glowing ominously through the haze of smoke that hung in the sky.

Hour after hour the guns pealed, the windows rattled and the earth trembled.

Couriers were dashing into the city with reports from the batteries. Soldiers were marching through the streets. It was reported that the men from the fleet would attempt a landing.

The women rushed to the little iron balcony and watched the troops marching to repel them.

In the first line Jennie saw the tall figure of Dick Welford. He glanced upward, lifted his cap and held it steadily in his hand for four blocks until they turned and swept out of sight.

Jennie was leaning on the rail with tear-dimmed eyes.

"I wonder why that soldier took his hat off?" her aunt asked.

"Yes—I wonder!" was the soft answer.

By three o'clock it was known that not a man had been killed at either of the shore batteries and women began to smile and breathe once more.

The newsboys were screaming an extra.

Jennie hurried into the street and bought one.

In big black headlines she read:

RICHMOND AND WASHINGTON ABLAZE WITH EXCITEMENT!
THE NORTH WILD WITH RAGE
VIRGINIA AND NORTH CAROLINA ARMING TO COME TO OUR RESCUE!

She walked rapidly to the water's edge to get the latest news from the front. A tiny rowboat was deliberately pulling through the harbor squarely under the guns of Sumter. She watched it with amazement, looking each moment to see it disappear beneath the waves. It was probably her foolish father.

With steady, even stroke the boatman pulled for the shore as unconcerned as if he were listening to the rattle of firecrackers on the fourth of July.

To her surprise it proved to be a negro. He tied his boat and deliberately unloaded his supply of vegetables. His stolid, sphinx-like face showed neither fear nor interest.

"Weren't you afraid of Anderson's cannon, uncle?" Jennie asked.

"Nobum—nobum—"

"You might have been blown to pieces—"

"Nobum—Marse Anderson daresn't hit me!"

"Why not?"

"He knows my marster don't 'low nuttin like dat—I'se too val'eble er nigger. Nobum, dey ain't none ob 'em gwine ter pester me, an' I ain't gwine ter meddle wid dem—dey kin des fight hit out twixt 'em—"

Through the long night the steady boom of cannon, and the scream of shells from the shore.

At one o'clock next day the flagstaff was cut down by a solid shot, and Sumter was silent.

At three o'clock a mob surged up the street following Senator Barton, who had just come from the harbor. He was on his way to Beauregard's headquarters.

Anderson had surrendered.

A strange quiet held the city. There was no jubilation, no bonfires, no illuminations to celebrate the victory. A sigh of relief for deliverance from a great danger that had threatened their life—that was all.

The Southern flag was flying now from the battered walls, and the people were content. They were glad that Beauregard had given old Bob Anderson the privilege of saluting his flag and marching out with the honors of war. All they asked was to be let alone.

And they were doubly grateful for the strange Providence that had saved every soldier's life while the walls of the Fort had been hammered into a shapeless mass. No blood had yet been spilled on either side. The President of the Confederacy caught the wonderful news from the wires with a cry of joy.

"Peace may yet be possible!" he exclaimed excitedly. "No blood has been spilled in actual conflict—"

His joy was short lived. A rude awakening was in store.

Dick Welford strolled along the brilliantly lighted "Battery" that night with Jennie's little hand resting on his arm.

"I tell you, Jennie, I was scared!" he was saying with boyish earnestness. "You see a fellow never knows how he's going to come out of a close place like that till he tries it. I had a fine uniform and I'd learned the drill and all that—but I had not smelled brimstone at short range. I didn't know how I'd do under fire. Now I know I'm a worthy descendant of my old Scotch-Irish ancestor who held a British officer before him for a shield and gracefully backed out of danger."

They stopped and gazed over the lazy, shimmering waters of the harbor.

Jennie looked up into his manly face with a glow of pride.

"You're splendid, Dick,—I'm proud of you!"

"Are you?" he asked eagerly.

"Yes. You're just like my brothers."

"Look here now, Jennie," he protested, "don't you go telling me that you'll be a sister to me. I've got a lot of sisters at home and I don't need any more—"

"I didn't mean it that way, Dick," she responded tenderly. "My brothers are just the finest, bravest men that God ever made in this world—that's what I meant."

"Don't you like me a little?"

"I almost love you to-night—maybe it's our victory—maybe it's the fear that made me pray for you and the boys on that house top the other night—I don't know—"

"Did you pray for me?" he asked softly.

"Yes—"

"I ought to be satisfied with that, but I'm not—I want you! Won't you be mine?"

She smiled into his eager face in a gentle, whimsical way. A half promise to him was just trembling on her lips when Socola's slender, erect figure suddenly crossed the street. He lifted his hat with a genial bow.

Dick ground his teeth in a smothered oath, and Jennie spoke abruptly:

"Come—it's late—we must go in."

Through the long night the girl lay awake with the calm, persistent, smiling face of the foreigner looking into the depths of her brown eyes.

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CHAPTER XII

A LITTLE CLOUD

The first aggressive act of the President of the Confederacy revealed his alert and far-seeing mind. His keen eye was bent upon the sea, with an instinctive appreciation of the tremendous import of the long Southern coast line.

Without a ship afloat or a single navy yard, by a stroke of his pen he created a fleet destined to sweep the commerce of the North from every sea. His task was to create something out of nothing and how well he did it events swiftly bore their testimony.

The United States Government was the only nation which had refused to join the agreement to abandon the use of letters of marque and reprisal for destroying the unarmed vessels of commerce in time of war. This unfortunate piece of diplomacy gave Jefferson Davis the opportunity to strike his first blow at the power and prestige of the North.

He immediately issued a proclamation offering to issue such letters to any ship that would arm herself and enlist under the ensign of the Confederate navy. The response was quick and the ultimate result the lowering of the flag of the Union from practically every ship of commerce that sailed the ocean.

Gideon Welles conferred with his Chief in Washington and Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation which at the time created scarcely a ripple of excitement. And yet that order was the most important document which came from the White House during the entire four years of the war.

When the test came sixteen captains, thirty-four commanders and one hundred and eleven midshipmen resigned and cast their fortunes with the South. Not one of them attempted to use his position to surrender a ship.

Small as it was, the entire navy of the United States was practically intact. It comprised ninety ships of war—forty-two of them ready for active service. The majority of the vessels ready for war were steam-propelled craft of the latest improved type.

The United States had been one of the first world powers to realize the value of steam and rebuild its navy accordingly. In twenty years, practically a new navy had been constructed, ranking in effective power third only to England and France. Within the past five years, the Government had built the steam frigates, Merrimac, Niagara, Colorado, Wabash, Minnesota, and Roanoke. In addition to these twelve powerful steam sloops of war had been commissioned—the Hartford, Brooklyn, Lancaster, Richmond, Narragansett, Dakota, Iroquois, Wyoming, and Seminole. They were of the highest type of construction and compared favorably with the best ships of the world.

These ships at the opening of the war were widely scattered, but their homeward bound streamers were all fluttering in the sky.

President Lincoln in his proclamation ordered the most remarkable blockade in the history of the world. This document declared three thousand miles of Southern coast, from the Virginia Capes to the Rio Grande, closed to the commerce of the world.

The little fleet boldly sailed on its tremendous mission. The smoke of its funnels made but a tiny smudge on the wide, shining Southern skies. But with swift and terrible swirl this cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, grew into a storm whose black shadow shrouded the Southland in gloom.

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CHAPTER XIII

THE CLOSING OF THE RANKS

A wave of fierce anger swept the North. The fall of Sumter was the one topic on every lip. Men stopped their trade, their work, their play and looked about them for the nearest rallying ground of soldiers.

The President of the United States was quick to seize the favorable moment to call for 75,000 volunteers. That these troops were to fight the Confederacy was not questioned for a moment.

The effect of this proclamation on the South was a political earthquake. In a single day all differences of opinion were sunk in the common cause. A feeling of profound wonder swept every thoughtful man within the Southern States. To this moment, even a majority of those who favored the policy of secession had done so under the belief that it was the surest way of securing redress of grievances and of bringing the Federal Government back to its original Constitutional principles. Many of them believed, and all of their leaders in authority hoped, that a re-formation of the Union would soon take place in peaceful ways on the basis of the new Constitution proclaimed at Montgomery. Many Northern newspapers, led by the New York Herald, had advocated this course. The hope of the majority of the Southern people was steadfast that the Union would thus be continued and strengthened, and made more perfect, as it had been in 1789 after the withdrawal of nine States from the Old Union by the adoption of the Constitution of 1787.

Abraham Lincoln's proclamation shattered all hope of such peaceful adjustment.

Thousands of the best men in Virginia and North Carolina had voted against secession. Not one of them, in the face of this proclamation, would dispute longer with their brethren. Whatever they might think about the expediency of withdrawing from the Union, they were absolutely clear on two points. The President of the United States had no power under the charter of our Government to declare war. Congress only could do that. If the Cotton States were out of the Union, his act was illegal because the usurpation of supreme power. If they were yet in the Union, the raising of an army to invade their homes was a plain violation of the Constitution.

The heart of the South beat as one man. The cause of the war had been suddenly shifted to a broader and deeper foundation about which no possible difference could ever again arise in the Southern States.

The demand for soldiers to invade the South was a bugle call to Southern manhood to fight for their liberties and defend their homes. It gave even to the staunchest Union men of the Old South the overt act of an open breach of the Constitution. From the moment Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a war without the act of Congress, from that moment he became a dictator and a despot who deliberately sought to destroy their liberties.

The cause of the South not only meant the defense of their homes from foreign invasion; it became a holy crusade for the reëstablishment of Constitutional freedom.

Virginia immediately seceded from the Union by the vote of the same men who had refused to secede but a few weeks before. The old flag fell from its staff on her Capitol and the new symbol of Southern unity was unfurled in its place. As if by magic the new flag fluttered from every hill, housetop and window, while crowds surged through the streets shouting and waving it aloft. Cannon boomed its advent and cheering thousands saluted it.

A great torchlight parade illumined the streets on April 19. In this procession walked the men who a week ago had marched through Franklin Street waving the old flag of the Union and shouting themselves hoarse in their determination to uphold it. They had signed the ordinance of secession with streaming eyes, but they signed it with firm hands, and sent their sons to the muster fields next day.

Augusta County, a Whig and Union center, and Rockingham, an equally strong Democratic Union county, each contributed fifteen hundred soldiers to the new cause. Women not only began to prepare the equipment for their men, but many of them began to arm and practice themselves. Boys from ten to fourteen were daily drilling. In Petersburg three hundred free negroes offered their services to fight or to ditch and dig.

The bitterness of the answers of the Southern Governors from the Border States yet in the Union amazed the President at Washington.

His demand for troops was refused in tones of scorn and defiance.

Governor Magoffin of Kentucky replied:

"The State will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States."

Governor Harris telegraphed from Nashville:

"The State of Tennessee will not furnish a single man for coercion, but fifty thousand if necessary for the defense of her rights."

The message of Governor Ellis of North Carolina was equally emphatic:

"I will be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of our country, and to this war upon the liberties of a free people."

Governor Rector of Arkansas replied:

"Your demand adds insult to injury."

Governor Jackson of Missouri was indignant beyond all others:

"Your requisition in my judgment is illegal, unconstitutional, and revolutionary—its objects inhuman and diabolical."

Tennessee followed Virginia by seceding on May 6. Arkansas on May 18, and North Carolina by unanimous vote on May 21.

North Carolina had been slow to announce her final separation from the old Union. But she had been prompt in proclaiming her own sovereign rights within her territory when the National Government had dared to call them in question. On the day the President had issued his proclamation she seized Fort Macon at Beaufort. Fort Caswell was taken and garrisoned by her volunteers, and on April 19, the arsenal at Fayetteville was captured without bloodshed. The value of this achievement to the South was incalculable. The Confederacy thus secured sixty-five thousand stand of arms, of which twenty-eight thousand were of the most modern pattern.

Virginia had seceded on April 17 and immediately moved to secure under the resumption of her complete sovereignty all the arms, munitions of war, ship stores and military posts within her borders. Two posts of tremendous importance she attempted to seize at once—the great navy yard at Norfolk and the arsenal and shops at Harper's Ferry. The navy yard contained a magnificent dry dock worth millions, huge ship houses, supplies, ammunition, small arms and cannon, and had lying in its basin several vessels of war, complete and incomplete.

Harper's Ferry contained ten thousand muskets, five thousand rifles and a complete set of machinery for the manufacture of arms capable of turning out two thousand muskets a month.

A force of Virginia volunteers moved on Harper's Ferry. The small Federal garrison asked for a parley, which was granted. In a short time flames were pouring from the armory and arsenal. The garrison had set fire to the buildings and escaped across the railroad bridge into Maryland.

The Virginia troops rushed into the burning buildings, and saved five thousand muskets and three thousand unfinished rifles. The garrison had laid trains of powder to blow up the workshops, but the Virginians extinguished the flames and saved to the South the invaluable machinery for making and repairing muskets and rifles. It was shipped to Fayetteville and Richmond and installed for safety.

The destruction of the navy yard at Norfolk was more complete and irreparable. The dry dock was little damaged, but the destruction of stores and property was enormous. All ships in the harbor were set on fire and scuttled.

Events moved now with swift and terrible certainty.

Massachusetts attempted, on April 19, to send a regiment through the streets of Baltimore to invade the South, and the indignant wrath of her citizens could not be controlled by the mayor or police. The street cars on which they were riding across town to the Camden station were thrown from the tracks. The crowds jammed the streets and shouted their curses in the face of the advancing volunteers. Stones were hurled into their ranks and two soldiers dropped. A volley was poured into the crowd and several fell dead and wounded.

The crowd went mad. Revolvers were drawn and fired point blank into the ranks of the soldiers and those who were unarmed rushed to arm themselves. From Frederic to Smith Streets the firing on both sides continued with the regular crash of battle. Citizens were falling, but even the unarmed men continued to press forward and hurl stones into the ranks of the New Englanders.

The troops began to yield before the determined onslaughts of the infuriated crowds, bewildered and apparently without real commanders. They pressed through the streets, staggering, confused, breaking into a run and turning to fire on their assailants as they retreated.

Harassed, bleeding and exhausted, the regiment at last reached the Baltimore & Ohio station. The fight continued without pause. Volleys of stones were hurled into the cars, shattering windows and paneling. The troops were ordered to lie down on the floors and keep their heads below the line of the windows. Maddened men pressed to the car windows, cursing and yelling their defiance. For half a mile along the tracks the crowd struggled and shouted, piling the rails with new obstructions as fast as policemen could remove them. Through a steady roar of hoots, yells and curses the train at last pulled slowly out, the troops pouring a volley into the crowd.

In this first irregular battle of the sections the Massachusetts regiment lost four killed and thirty-six wounded. The Baltimoreans lost twelve killed and an unknown number wounded.

A wave of tremendous excitement swept the State of Maryland. Bridges on all railroads leading north were immediately burned and the City of Washington cut off from communication with the outside world. Troops were compelled to avoid Baltimore and find transportation by water to Annapolis. Mass meetings were held and speeches of bitter defiance hurled against the Federal Government. The Baltimore Council appropriated five hundred thousand dollars to put the city in a state of defense, though the State had proclaimed its neutrality.

The shrewd, good-natured, even-tempered President at Washington used all his powers of personal diplomacy to pour oil on the troubled waters of Maryland. In the meantime with swift, sure, and merciless tread he moved on the turbulent State with the power of Federal arms. It was impossible to hold the Capital of the Nation with a hostile State separating it from the loyal North.

The steps he took were all clearly unconstitutional, but they were necessary to save the Capital. They were the acts of a dictator, for Congress was not in session, but he dared to act. Troops were suddenly thrown into the city of Baltimore and its streets and heights planted with cannon. The chief of police was arrested and imprisoned, the police board was suspended and the city brought under the rule of drumhead court-martial. The writ of habeas corpus was suspended by Federal authorities in a free and sovereign State whose Legislature had proclaimed its neutrality in the sectional conflict. Blank warrants were issued by military officers and the house of every suspect entered by force and searched. The mayor and his Council were arrested without warrant, held without trial, and imprisoned in a military fortress, and when the Legislature dared to protest, its members were arrested and its session closed by bayonets.

So thoroughly was this work done that within thirty days from the attack on the troops of New England, Maryland's Governor by proclamation called for four regiments of volunteers to assist the Washington Government in the proposed invasion of the South.

In like manner, with hand of steel within a velvet glove, Mr. Lincoln prevented the secession of Kentucky and Missouri. It was done with less violence, but it was done, and these rich and powerful States saved to the Union.

The swift and bloodless conquest of Maryland inspired the North with the most grotesque conception of the war and its outcome.

The British and French Governments had immediately recognized the Confederate States as belligerents under the terms of international law and closed their ports to the armed vessels of both contestants. Mr. Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State, hastened to assure the nations of Europe that a dissolution of the Union was an absurd impossibility. It had never entered the mind of any candid statesman in America and should be dismissed at once by statesmen in Europe. And yet at this time eleven Southern States, stretching from the James to the Rio Grande, with a population of eight millions, had by solemn act of their Legislatures withdrawn from the Union and their armies were camping within a few miles of the City of Washington.

In all the North not a single statesman or a single newspaper appeared to have any conception of the serious task before them. The fusillades of rant, passion and bombast which filled the air would have been comic but for the grim tragedy which was stalking in their wake.

The "Rebellion" was ridiculed and sneered at in terms that taxed the genius of the writers for words of contempt.

The New York Tribune, the greatest and most powerful organ of public opinion in the North, a paper which had boldly from the first proclaimed the right of the South to peaceable secession, was now swept away with the popular fury.

Its editor gravely declared:

"The Southern rebellion is nothing more or less than the natural recourse of all mean-spirited and defeated tyrannies to rule or ruin, making of course a wide distinction between the will and the power, for the hanging of traitors is soon to begin before a month is over. The Nations of Europe may rest assured that Jeff Davis and Co. will be swinging from the battlements at Washington, at least by the fourth of July. We spit upon a later and longer deferred justice."

The New York Times gave its opinion with equal clearness:

"Let us make quick work. The Rebellion is an unborn tadpole. Let us not fall into the delusion of mistaking a local commotion for a revolution. A strong active pull together will do our work in thirty days. We have only to send a column of twenty-five thousand men across the Potomac to Richmond to burn out the rats there; another column of twenty-five thousand to Cairo to seize the Cotton ports of the Mississippi and retain the remaining twenty-five thousand called for by the President at Washington—not because there is any need for them there but because we do not require their services elsewhere."

The staid old Philadelphia Press declared:

"No man of sense can for a moment doubt that all this much-ado-about-nothing will end in a month. The Northern people are invincible. The rebels are a band of ragamuffins who will fly like chaff before the wind on our approach."

The West vied with the East in boastful clamor.

The Chicago Tribune shouted from the top of its columns:

"We insist that the West be allowed the honor of settling this little trouble by herself since she is most interested in its suppression to insure the free navigation of the Mississippi River. Let the East stand aside. This is our war. We can end it successfully in two months. Illinois can whip the whole South by herself. We insist on the affair being turned over to us."

With prospects of a short war and cheaply earned glory the rage for volunteering was resistless. The war for three months was to be a holiday excursion and every man would return a hero crowned with garlands of flowers, the center of admiring thousands. The blacksmiths of Brooklyn were busy making handcuffs for one of her crack regiments. Each volunteer had sworn to lead at least one captive rebel in chains through the crowded streets in the great parade on their return.

Socola on his arrival at Montgomery from Charleston read these fulminations from the North with amazement and rage. He sent his bitter and emphatic protest against such madness to Holt. The faithful Joseph had been rewarded with an office to his liking. He was now the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army. He turned Socola's letters over to Cameron, the new Secretary of War, who read them with rising wrath.

"The author of those letters," he said with a scowl, "is either a damned fool, or traitor."

Holt's lower lip was thrust out and the lines of his big mouth drawn into a knot.

"I assure you, sir—he is neither. He is absolutely loyal. His patriotism is a religion. He has entered his dangerous and important mission with the zeal of a religious fanatic."

"That accounts for it then—he's insane. I don't care to read any more such twaddle and I won't pay for the services of such a man out of the funds of the War Department."

With the utmost difficulty Holt secured the consent of the Secretary of War to continue Socola's commission for two months longer.

The only consolation the young patriot found in the contemptuous reply his Government made to his solemn warnings was the almost equal fatuity with which the Southern people were now approaching their first test of battle.

Until the proclamation of President Lincoln, both Jefferson Davis and the South had believed in the possibility of a peaceful reconciliation. Even when the proclamation had been made and the wild response of the North had been instantly given, the Southern people refused to believe that the millions of Northern voters who still clung to the old forms of Constitutional Government under the leadership of Stephen A. Douglas would surrender their principles, arm themselves and march to coerce a State at the command of a President against whom they had voted.

Senator Barton, from his new position in the Confederate Senate, scouted the idea of serious war.

"Bah!" he growled to Socola, who was drawing him out. "The Yankees won't fight!"

"That's what they say about you, sir," was the cool response.

"Who ever heard of a race of shopkeepers turning into soldiers?" The Senator laughed. "Such men have no martial prowess! They are unequal to mighty deeds of valor."

The white teeth of the young observer gleamed in a smile.

"On the other hand, Senator, I'm afraid history proves that commercial communities, once aroused, are the most dogged, pugnacious, ambitious and obstinate fighters of the world—Carthage, Venice, Genoa, Holland and England have surely proven this—"

"There's one thing certain," Barton roared. "We'll bring England to her knees if there is a war. Cotton is the King of Commerce, and we hold the key of his empire. The population of England will starve without our cotton. If we need them they've got to come to our rescue, sir!"

Socola did not argue the point. It was amazing how widespread was this idea in the South. He wrote his Government again and again that the whole movement of secession was based on this conception.

There was one man in Washington who read these warnings with keen insight—Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy. The part this quiet, unassuming man was preparing to play in the mighty drama then unfolding its first scene was little known or understood by those who were filling the world with the noise of their bluster.

Jefferson Davis at his desk in Montgomery saw with growing anxiety the confidence of his people in immediate and overwhelming success. In answer to Abraham Lincoln's proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteers to fight the South, he called for 100,000 to defend it. The rage for volunteering in the South was even greater than the North. An army of five hundred thousand men could have been enrolled for any length of service if arms and equipment could have been found. It was utterly impossible to arm and equip one hundred thousand, before the first battle would be fought.

Ambitious Southern boys, raging for the smell of battle, rushed from post to post, begged and pleaded for a place in the ranks. They offered big bounties for the places assigned to men who were lucky enough to be accepted.

The Confederate Congress, to the chagrin of their President, fixed the time of service at six months. Jefferson Davis was apparently the only man in the South who had any conception of the gigantic task before his infant government. He begged and implored his Congress for an enrollment of three years or the end of the war. The Congress laughed at his absurd fears. The utmost they would grant was enlistment for the term of one year.

With grim foreboding but desperate earnestness the President of the Confederacy turned his attention to the organization and equipment of this force with which he was expected to defend the homes of eight million people scattered over a territory of 728,000 square miles, with an open frontier of a thousand miles and three thousand leagues of open sea.

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CHAPTER XIV

RICHMOND IN GALA DRESS

From the moment Virginia seceded from the Union it was a foregone conclusion that Richmond would be the capital of the new Confederacy—not only because the great Virginian was the Father of the Country and his glorious old Commonwealth the mother of States and Presidents, but because her soil must be the arena of the first great battle.

On May 23, the Provisional Congress at Montgomery adjourned to meet in Richmond on July 20, and Jefferson Davis began his triumphal procession to the new Capital.

Jennie Barton, her impulsive father, the Senator, Mrs Barton, with temper serene and unruffled, and Signor Henrico Socola of the Sardinian Ministry, were in the party. Dick Welford and two boys were already in Virginia with their regiments. Tom was in New Orleans with Raphael Semmes, fitting out the little steamer Sumter for a Confederate cruiser.

Senator Barton had been requested by the new President to act as his aide, and the champion of secession had accepted the honor under protest. It was not of importance commensurate with his abilities, but it was perhaps worth while for the moment until a greater field was opened.

The arrangement made Socola's association with Jennie of double importance. As the train whirled through the sunlit fields of the South he found his position by her side more and more agreeable and interesting. She was a girl of remarkable intelligence. He had observed that she was not afraid of silence. Her tongue was not forever going. In fact she seemed disinclined to talk unless she had something to say.

He glanced at her from the corners of his dark eyes with a friendly smile.

"You are serious to-day, Miss Jennie?"

"Yes. I wish I were a man!"

"You'd go to the front, of course?"

"Yes—wouldn't you?"

"For my country—yes—"

He paused a moment and went on carelessly:

"Your older brother, the Judge, will fight for the Union?"

The sensitive lips trembled.

"No—thank God. He has sent my mother word that for her sake and mine he'll not fight his father and younger brothers in battle. He's going to do a braver thing than march to the front. He's going to face his neighbors in New Orleans and stand squarely by his principles."

"It will take a brave man to do that, won't it?"

"The bravest of the brave."

The train was just pulling into a sleepy Southern town, the tracks running straight down the center of its main street. A company was drawn up to salute the new President and cheering thousands had poured in from the surrounding country to do him honor. They cheered themselves hoarse and were still at it when the train slowly started northward. The company which greeted their arrival with arms presented were on board now, chatting, shouting, singing, waving their caps and handkerchiefs to tear-stained women.

The country through which the Presidential party passed had been suddenly transformed into a vast military camp, the whole population war mad.

Every woman from every window of every house in sight of the train waved a handkerchief. The flutter of those white flags never ceased.

The city of Richmond gave their distinguished visitor a noble reception. He was quartered temporarily at the Spotswood Hotel, but the City Council had purchased the handsomest mansion in town at a cost of $40,000 and offered it to him as their token of admiration of his genius.

Mr. Davis was deeply touched by this mark of esteem from Virginia, but sternly refused the gift for himself. He accepted it for the Confederate Government as the official residence of the President.

Socola found the city a mere comfortable village in comparison with New York or Boston or Philadelphia, though five times the size of Montgomery. He strolled through its streets alone, wondering in which one of the big old-fashioned mansions lived the remarkable Southern woman to whom his Government had referred him for orders. He must await the arrival of the messenger who would deliver to him in person its description. In the meantime with tireless eye he was studying the physical formation of every street and alley. He must know it, every crook and turn.

Until the advent of the troops Richmond had been one of the quietest of all the smaller cities of America. Barely forty thousand inhabitants, one third of whom were negro slaves, it could boast none of the displays or excitements of a metropolis. Its vices were few, its life orderly and its society the finest type of the genuine American our country had developed.

Rowdyism was unknown. The police department consisted of a dozen "watchmen" whose chief duty was to round up a few straggling negroes who might be found on the streets after nine o'clock at night and put them in "the Cage" until morning. "The Cage" was a ramshackled wooden building too absurd to be honored by the name of prison.

The quiet, shady streets were suddenly transformed into the throbbing, tumultuous avenues of a crowded Capital—already numbering more than one hundred thousand inhabitants.

Its pulse beat with a new and fevered life. Its atmosphere was tense with the electric rumble of the coming storm—everywhere bustle, hurry and feverish preparations for war. The Tredegar Iron Works had doubled its force of men. Day and night the red glare of the furnaces threw its sinister glow over the yellow, turbulent waters of the James. With every throb now of its red heart a cannon was born destined to slay a thousand men.

Every hill was white with the tents of soldiers, their camps stretching away into the distant fields and forests.

Every street was thronged. Couriers on blooded horses dashed to and fro bearing the messages of imperious masters. From every direction came the crash of military bands. And over all the steady, low rumble of artillery and the throbbing tramp of soldiers. In every field and wood for miles around the city could be heard the neighing of horses, the bugle call of the trooper, the shouts of gay recruits and the sharp command of drilling officers.

The rattle of the ambulance and the long, red trenches of the uncoffined dead had not come yet. They were not even dreamed in the hearts of the eager, rollicking, fun-loving children of the South.

There were as yet no dances, no social festivities. The town was soldier mad. Few men not in uniform were to be seen on the streets. A man in citizen's clothes was under suspicion as to his principles.

With each train, new companies and regiments arrived. Day and night the tramp of soldiers' feet, the throb of drum, the scream of fife, the gleam of bayonets.

Everywhere soldiers were welcomed, fêted, lionized. The finest ladies of Richmond vied with one another in serving their soldier guests. Society turned out en masse to every important review.

Southern society was melted into a single pulsing thought—the fight in defense of their homes and their liberty. In the white heat of this mighty impulse the barriers of class and sex were melted.

The most delicately reared and cultured lady of society admitted without question the right of any man who wore a gray uniform to speak to her without introduction and escort her anywhere on the streets. In not a single instance was this high privilege abused by an insult, indignity or an improper word.

Socola saw but one lady who showed the slightest displeasure.

A dainty little woman of eight, delicately trained in the ways of polite society, was shocked at the familiarity of a soldier who had dared to caress her.

She turned to her elderly companion and gasped with indignation:

"Auntie! Did you ever! Any man who wears a stripe on his pantaloons now thinks he can speak to a lady!"

Socola laughed and passed on to inspect the camp of the famous Hampton Legion of South Carolina.

His heart went out in a sudden wave of admiration for these Southern people who could merge thus their souls and bodies into the cause of their country.

The Hampton Legion was recruited, armed and equipped and led by Wade Hampton. Its private soldiers were the flower of South Carolina's society. The dress parades of this regiment of gentlemen were the admiration of the town. The carriages that hung around their maneuvers were as gay and numerous as the assemblage on a fashionable race course. Each member of this famous legion went into Richmond with his trunks and body servant. They, too, were confident of a brief struggle.

A kind fate held fast the dark curtains of the future. The camp was a picnic ground, and Death was only a specter of the dim unknown.

Just as Socola strolled by the grounds, the camp spied the handsome figure of young Preston Hampton in a pair of spotless yellow kid gloves. They caught and rolled him in the dust and spoiled his gloves.

He laughed and took it good naturedly.

The hardier sons of the South held the attention of the keen, observing eyes with stronger interest. He knew what would become of those trunks and fine clothes. The thing he wished most to know was the quality and the temper of the average man in the Southern ranks.

Socola met Dick Welford suddenly face to face, smiled and bowed. Dick hesitated, returned his recognition and offered his hand.

"Mr. Welford—"

"Signor Socola."

Dick's greeting was a little awkward, but the older man put him at once at ease with his frank, friendly manners.

"A brave show your Champ de Mars, sir!"

"Does look like business, doesn't it?" Dick responded with pride. "Would you like to go through the camps and see our men?"

"Very much."

"Come, I'll show you."

Two hundred yards from the camp of the Hampton Legion they found the Louisiana Zouaves of Wheat's command, small, tough-looking men with gleaming black eyes.

"Frenchmen!" Dick sneered. "They'll fight though—"

"Their people in the old world have that reputation," Socola dryly remarked.

Beyond them lay a regiment of fierce, be-whiskered countrymen from the lower sections of Mississippi.

"Look out for those fellows," the young Southerner said serenely. "They're from old Jeff's home. You'll hear from them. Their fathers all fought in Mexico."

Socola nodded.

Beside the Mississippians lay a regiment of long-legged, sinewy riflemen from Arkansas.

A hundred yards further they saw the quaint coon-skin caps of John B. Gordon's company from Georgia.

Socola watched these lanky mountaineers with keen interest.

"The Raccoon Roughs," Dick explained. "First company of Georgia volunteers. They had to march over two or three States before anybody would muster them in. They're happy as June bugs now."

They passed two regiments of quiet North Carolinians. The young Northerner observed their strong, muscular bodies and earnest faces.

"And these two large regiments, Mr. Welford?" Socola asked.

"Oh," the Virginian exclaimed with a careless touch of scorn in his voice, "they're Tarheels—not much for looks, but I reckon they'll stick."

"I've an idea they will," was the serious reply.

Dick pointed with pride to a fine-looking regiment of Virginians.

"Good-looking soldiers," Socola observed.

"Aren't they? That's my regiment. You'll hear from them in the first battle."

"And those giants?" Socola inquired, pointing to the right at a group of tall, rude-looking fellows.

"Texas Rangers."

"I shouldn't care to meet them in a row—"

"You know what General Taylor said of them in the Mexican War?"

"No—"

"They're anything but gentlemen or cowards."

"I agree with him," Socola laughed.

"What chance has a Yankee got against such men?" Dick asked with a wag of his big blond head.

"Let me show you what they think—"

Socola drew a leaf of Harper's Magazine from his pocket and spread it before the young trooper's indignant gaze.

The cartoon showed a sickly-looking Southerner carrying his musket under an umbrella accompanied by a negro with a tray full of mint juleps.

"That's a joke, isn't it!" Dick roared. "Will you give me this paper?"

"Certainly, Monsieur!"

Dick folded the sheet, still laughing. "I'll have some fun with this in camp to-night. Come on—I want to show you just one more bunch of these sickly-looking mint-julipers—"

Again the Southerner roared.

They quickened their pace and in a few minutes were passing through the camps of the Red River men from Arkansas and Northern Louisiana.

"Aren't you sorry for these poor fellows?" Dick laughed.

"I have never seen anything like them," Socola admitted, looking on their stalwart forms with undisguised admiration. Scarcely a man was under six feet in height, with broad, massive shoulders and chests and not an ounce of superfluous flesh. Their resemblance to each other was remarkable. Nature had cast each one in the same heroic mold. The spread of giant unbroken forests spoke in their brawny arms and legs. The look of an eagle soaring over great rivers and fertile plains flashed in their fearless eyes.

"What do you think of them?" Dick asked with boyish pride.

"I'd like to send their photographs to Harper's—"

"For God's sake, don't do that!" Dick protested. "If you do, we'll never get a chance to see a Yankee. I want to get in sight of 'em anyhow before they run. All I ask of the Lord is to give me one whack at those little, hump-backed, bow-legged shoemakers from Boston!"

Socola smiled dryly.

"In five minutes after we meet—there won't be a shoe-string left fit to use."

The dark face flashed with a strange light from the depths of the somber eyes—only for an instant did he lose self-control. His voice was velvet when he spoke.

"Your faith is strong, M'sieur!"

"It's not faith—we know. One Southerner can whip three Yankees any day."

"But suppose it should turn out that he had to whip five or six or a dozen?"

"Don't you think these fellows could do it?"

Socola hesitated. It was a shame to pull down a faith that could remove mountains. He shrugged his slender shoulders and a pensive look stole over his face. He seemed to be talking to himself.

"Your President tells me that his soldiers will do all that pluck and muscle, endurance and dogged courage, dash and red-hot patriotism can accomplish. And yet his view is not sanguine. A sad undertone I caught in his voice. He says your war will be long and bloody—"

"Yes—I know," Dick broke in, "but nobody agrees with him. We'll show old Jeff what we can do, if he'll just give us one chance—that's all we ask—just one chance. Read that editorial in the Richmond Examiner—"

He thrust a copy of the famous yellow journal of the South into Socola's hand and pointed to a marked paragraph:

"From mountain top and valleys to the shores of the seas there is one wild shout of fierce resolve to capture Washington City at all and every human hazard!"

The North was marching southward with ropes and handcuffs with which to end in triumph their holiday excursion on July 4. The South was marching to meet them with eager pride, each man afraid the fight would be over before he could reach the front to fire a single shot. And behind each gay regiment of scornful men marched the white silent figure of Death.

---

CHAPTER XV

THE HOUSE ON CHURCH HILL

As Socola left his room at the Spotswood the following night, a stranger met him at the turn of the dimly lighted corridor.

"Signor Socola, I believe?"

"At your service."

"I know some mutual friends in Washington connected with the Sardinian Ministry—"

"I'm just starting for a stroll through the city," Socola interrupted. "Will you join me?"

"With pleasure. As I am well acquainted with the streets of Richmond, allow me to be your guide."

Socola followed with a nod of approval. Their walk led to the highest of the city's seven hills. But few were stirring at this hour—half-past seven. The people were busy at supper.

The two men paused at the gate of a stately, old-fashioned mansion in the middle of a spacious lawn. The odor of sweet pinks filled the air. The rose trellis and elaborate scheme of flower beds and the boxwood hedges told the story of wealth and culture and high social position.

"I wish to introduce you to one of the most charming ladies of Richmond," the stranger said in quick, business-like tones, opening the gate as if he were used to the feel of the latch.

"Certainly," was the short reply.

In answer to the rap of the old-fashioned brass knocker, a quaint little woman of forty opened the door and showed them into the parlor.

The blinds were closed, and the room lighted by a single small kerosene lamp.

With quick precision the stranger presented his companion.

"Miss Van Lew, permit me to introduce to you Signor Henrico Socola of the Sardinian Ministry. He is the duly accredited but unofficial agent of his Majesty, Victor Emmanuel, and is cultivating friendly relations with the new Government of the South."

Miss Van Lew extended her hand and took the outstretched one with a warmth that surprised her visitor beyond measure.

"I recognized him at once," she said with emotion.

"Recognized me?"

"Your dear mother, sir, was my schoolmate in Philadelphia. I loved her. How alike you are!"

"Then we shall be friends—"

"We shall be more than friends—we shall be comrades—"

She paused and turned to the stranger:

"You can leave us now."

With a bow the man turned and left the room.

Socola studied the little woman who had deliberately chosen to lay her life, her fortune and her home on the altar of her Country. He saw with a glance at her delicate but commanding figure the brilliant, accomplished, resolute woman of personality and charm.

She took the young man's hand again in hers and led him to a high-backed mahogany settee. She stroked the hands with her thin, cold fingers.

"How perfect the image of your mother! I would have known you anywhere. You must know and trust me. I was sent North to school. I came back to Virginia a more determined Abolitionist than ever. Our people have always hated Slavery. I made good my faith by freeing mine. We're not so well-to-do now, my mother and I."

She paused and looked wistfully about the stately room.

"This house could tell the story of gay and beautiful scenes—of balls—receptions and garden parties in bowers of roses—of coaches drawn by six snow-white horses standing at our door for the start to the White Sulphur Springs—"

She stopped suddenly, mastered her emotions and went on dreamily:

"Of great men and distinguished families our guests from the North and the South—Bishop Mann, Chief Justice John Marshall, the Lees, the Robinsons, Wickhams, Adams, Cabells,—the Carringtons—Fredrika Bremer, the Swedish novelist, visited us and wrote of us in her 'Homes in the New World.' Jennie Lind in the height of her glory sang in this room. Edgar Allan Poe read here aloud his immortal poem, 'The Raven.' You must realize what it means to me to become an outcast in Richmond—"

She drew from her bosom a newspaper clipping and handed it to Socola.

"Read that paragraph from this morning's editorial columns—"

The young man scanned the marked clipping.

RAPPED ON THE KNUCKS

"One of the City papers contained on Monday a word of exhortation to certain females of Southern residence (and perhaps birth) but of decidedly Northern and Abolition proclivities. The creatures, though specially alluded to, are not named. If such people do not wish to be exposed and dealt with as alien enemies to the country they would do well to cut stick while they can do so with safety to their worthless carcasses—"

"And you will not 'cut stick'?"

"It's not the way of our breed. I've been doing what I could for the past year. I have sent the Government at Washington letter after letter giving them full and accurate accounts of men and events here. I have made no concealment of my principles. We are Abolitionists and Unionists and they know it. These Southern men will not lift their hands against two helpless women unless they discover the deeper plans I've laid. I've stopped them on the streets and openly flung my sentiments into their faces. As the excitement has increased I have grown more violent and more incoherent. They have begun to say that I am insane—"

Socola lifted his hand in a quiet gesture.

"Good. You can play the part."

A look of elation overspread the thin, intellectual features.

"True—I'll do it. I see it in a flash. 'Crazy old Bet,' they'll call me—"

She sprang to her feet.

"Come upstairs."

He followed her light step up three flights of stairs into the attic. She pushed aside an old-fashioned wardrobe and opened a small door of plain pine boards about four feet in height which led to the darkened space beneath the roof.

She stooped and entered and he followed. A small, neat room was revealed eight feet high beside the inner wall, with ceiling sloping to three feet on the opposite side. An iron safe was fitted into the space beside the chimney and covered skillfully by a door completely cased in brick. The device was so perfect it was impossible to detect the fact that it was not a part of the chimney, each alternate layer of bricks fitted exactly into the place chiseled out for it in the wall of the chimney itself.

Socola examined the arrangement with care.

"A most skillful piece of work!" he exclaimed.

"I laid those bricks in that door casing with my own hand. The old safe has been there since my grandfather's day. This is your room, sir. That safe is for your important papers. You can spend the night here in safety when necessary. My house has been offered to the Government as the headquarters of its secret service. I have in this safe an important document for you."

She opened it and handed Socola a sealed envelope addressed:

"Signor Henrico Socola,
Richmond, Virginia."

He broke the seal and read the order from the new Bureau of Military Information placing him in command of its Richmond office.

He offered the paper to the little woman who held the candle for him to read.

"I know its contents," she said, observing him keenly. "The Government has chosen wisely. You can render invaluable service—"

She paused and looked at Socola with a curious smile.

"You know any girls in Richmond?"

"But one and she has just arrived with the Presidential party—Miss Jennie Barton—"

"The Senator's daughter?"

"The same."

"Wonderful!" the little woman went on eagerly. "Her father is on the staff of Jefferson Davis. Old Barton is a loud-mouthed fool who can't keep a secret ten minutes. You must make love to his daughter—"

Socola laughed. "Is it necessary?"

"Absolutely. You can't remain in Richmond indefinitely without a better excuse than your unofficial connection with the Ministry of Sardinia. You are young. You are handsome. All Southern girls have sweethearts—all Southern boys. They can't understand the boy who hasn't. You'll be suspected at once unless you comply with the custom of the country."

"Of course. I needn't actually make love to her—"

"That's exactly what you must do. Make love to her with all your might—as if your life depends on her answer and your stay in Richmond can be indefinite."

"I don't like the idea," he protested.

"Neither do I like this—" She swept the little attic room with a wave of her slender hand. "Come, my comrade, you must—"

He hesitated a moment, laughed, and said:

"All right."

---

CHAPTER XVI

THE FLOWER-DECKED TENT

When Socola rose the following morning he determined to throw every scruple to the winds and devote himself to Jennie Barton with a zeal and passion that would leave to his Southern rivals no doubt as to the secret of his stay.

At the first informal reception at the White House of the Confederacy Jennie had been pronounced the most fascinating daughter of the new Republic, as modest and unassuming as she was brilliant and beautiful.

After the manner of Southern beaux he addressed a note to her on a sheet of exquisitely tinted foreign paper, at the top of which was the richly embossed coat of arms of the Socola family of North Italy.

He asked of her the pleasure of a horseback ride over the hills of Virginia. He was a superb horseman, and she rode as if born in the saddle.

He sealed the note with a piece of tinted wax and stamped it with the die which reproduced his coat of arms. He smiled with satisfaction as he addressed the envelope in his smooth and perfectly rounded handwriting.

He read the answer with surprise and disappointment. The Senator had replied for his daughter. A slight accident to her mother had caused her to leave on the morning train for the South. She would probably remain at Fairview for two weeks.

There was no help for it. He must await her return. In the meantime there was work to do. The army of the South was slowly but surely shaping itself into a formidable engine of war.

The master mind at the helm of the new Government had laid the foundations of one of the most efficient forces ever sent into the arena of battle. It was as yet only a foundation but one which inspired in his mind not only a profound respect for his judgment, but a feeling of deep foreboding for the future.

Jefferson Davis had received a training of peculiar fitness for his task. The first work before the South was the organization, equipment and handling of its army of defense. The President they had called to the leadership had spent four years at West Point and seven years in the army on our frontiers, pushing the boundaries of the Republic into the West. He had led a regiment of volunteers in the conquest of Mexico, and in the battle of Buena Vista, not only saved the day in the moment of supreme crisis, but had given evidence of the highest order of military genius. On his return from the Mexican War he had been appointed a Brigadier General by the President of the United States but had declined the honor.

For four years as Secretary of War in the Cabinet of Franklin Pierce he had proven himself a master of military administration, had reorganized and placed on a modern basis of the highest efficiency the army of the Union and in this work has proven himself a terror to weakness, tradition and corruption.

He knew personally every officer of the first rank in the United States Army. His judgment of these men and their ability as commanders was marvelous in its accuracy. His genius as an army administrator undoubtedly gave to the South her first advantage in the opening of the conflict.

From the men who had resigned from the old army to cast their fortunes with the South his keen eye selected without hesitation the three men for supreme command whose abilities had no equal in America for the positions to which they were assigned. And these three men were patriots of such singleness of purpose, breadth of vision and greatness of soul that neither of them knew he was being considered for the highest command until handed his commission.

Samuel Cooper had been Adjutant General of the United States Army since 1852. Davis knew his record of stern discipline and uncompromising efficiency, and although a man of Northern birth, he appointed him Adjutant General of the Confederate Army without a moment's hesitation.

Albert Sidney Johnston was his second appointment to the rank of full General and Robert E. Lee his third—each destined to immortality.

His fourth nomination for the rank of full General he made with hesitation. Joseph E. Johnston under the terms of the law passed by the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy was entitled to a position in the first rank as acting Commissary General of the old army. The keen intuition of the President had perceived from the first the evidences of hesitation and of timidity in crisis which was the chief characteristic of Joseph E. Johnston. His sense of fairness under the terms of the law required that this man be given his chance. With misgivings but with high hopes the appointment was made.

Robert E. Lee he made military chieftain of the Government with headquarters in Richmond.

From four points the Northern forces were threatening the South. From the West by a flanking movement which might open the Mississippi River; from the mountains of Western Virginia whose people were in part opposed to secession; from Washington by a direct movement on Richmond; and from Fortress Monroe on the Virginia Peninsula.

The first skirmish before Fortress Monroe, led by B. F. Butler, had been repulsed with such ease no serious danger was felt in that quarter. The ten thousand men under Holmes and McGruder could hold Butler indefinitely.

Davis had seen from the first that one of the supreme dangers of the South lay in the long line of exposed frontier in the West. If a commander of military genius should succeed in turning his flank here the heart of the lower South would be pierced.

For this important command he reserved Albert Sidney Johnston.

The Northern army under George B. McClellan and Rosecrans had defeated the troops in Western Virginia. In a series of small fights they had lost a thousand men and all their artillery. General Lee was dispatched from Richmond to repair if possible this disaster.

The first two clashes had been a draw. The South had won first blood on the Peninsula—the North in Western Virginia. The main army of the South was now concentrated to oppose the main army of the North from Washington.

Brigadier General Beauregard, the widely acclaimed hero of Fort Sumter, was in command of this army near Manassas Station on the road to Alexandria.

Beauregard's position was in a measure an accident of fortune. The first shot had been fired by him at Sumter. He was the first paper-made hero of the war. He had led the first regiment into Virginia to defend her from invasion.

He was the man of the hour. His training and record, too, gave promise of high achievements. He had graduated from West Point in 1838, second in a class of forty-five men. His family was of high French extraction, having settled in Louisiana in the reign of Louis XV. He had entered the Mexican War a lieutenant and emerged from the campaign a major. He was now forty-five years old, in the prime of life. His ability had been recognized by the National Government in the beginning of the year by his appointment as Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point. His commission had been revoked at the last moment by the vacillating Buchanan because his brother-in-law, Senator Slidell of Louisiana, had made a secession speech in Washington.

Jefferson Davis was not enthusiastic in his confidence in the new hero. He was too much given to outbursts of a public kind to please the ascetic mind of the Southern leader. He had written some silly letters to the public deriding the power of the North. No one could know better than Davis how silly these utterances were. He "hated and despised the Yankees." Davis feared and recognized their power. Beauregard's assertion that the South could whip the North even if her only arms were flintlocks and pitchforks had been often and loudly repeated.

Of the army marshaling in front of him under the command of the venerable Winfield Scott he wrote with the utmost contempt.

"The enemies of the South," he declared, "are little more than an armed rabble, gathered together hastily on a false pretense and for an unholy purpose, with an octogenarian at its head!"

In spite of his small stature, Beauregard was a man of striking personal appearance—small, dark, thin, hair prematurely gray, his manners distinguished and severe.

It was natural that, with the fame of his first victory, itself the provoking cause of the conflict, his distinguished foreign name and courtly manners, he should have become the toast of the ladies in these early days of the pomp and glory of war. He was the center of an ever widening circle of fair admirers who lavished their attentions on him in letters, in flags, and a thousand gay compliments. His camp table was filled with exquisite flowers which flanked and sometimes covered his maps and plans. He used his bouquets for paper weights.

It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the cold intellectual standard by which Davis weighed men should have found Beauregard wanting in the qualifications of supreme command.

The President turned his eye to the flower-decked tent of his general with grave misgivings. Yet he was the man of the hour. It was fair that he should have his chance.

---

CHAPTER XVII

THE FATAL VICTORY

On the banks of the Potomac General Scott had massed against Beauregard the most formidable army which had ever marched under the flag of the Union. Its preparation was considered thorough, its numbers all that could be handled, and its artillery was the best in the world. All the regular army east of the Rockies, seasoned veterans of Indian campaigns, were joined with the immense force of volunteers from the Northern States—fifty full regiments of volunteers, eight companies of regular infantry, four companies of marines, nine companies of regular cavalry and twelve batteries of artillery with forty-nine big guns.

In command of this army of invasion was General McDowell, held to be the most scientific general in the North.

To supplement Beauregard's weakness as a commanding General in case of emergency, Joseph E. Johnston was placed at Harper's Ferry to guard the entrance of the Shenandoah Valley, secure the removal of the invaluable machinery saved from the Arsenal, and form a junction with Beauregard the moment he should be threatened.

The movement of General Patterson's army against Harper's Ferry had been too obviously a feint to deceive either Davis or Lee, his chief military adviser. Johnston was given ten thousand men and able assistants including General Jackson.

On the tenth of July Beauregard, anxiously awaiting information of the Federal advance, received an important message from an accomplished Southern woman, Mrs. Rose O'Neal Greenhow. She had remained in Washington as Miss Van Lew had in Richmond, to lay her life on the altar of her country. During the administration of Buchanan she had been a leader of Washington society. She was now a widow, noted for her wealth, beauty, wit and forceful personality. Her home was the meeting place of the most brilliant men and women of the old régime. Buchanan was her personal friend, as was William H. Seward. Her niece, a granddaughter of Dolly Madison, was the wife of the Little Giant of the West, Stephen A. Douglas.

Before leaving Washington to become the Adjutant General of Beauregard's army Colonel Thomas Jordan had given her the cipher code of the South and arranged to make her house the Northern headquarters of the Southern secret service.

Her first messenger was a girl carefully disguised as a farmer's daughter returning from the sale of her vegetables in the Washington market. She passed the lines without challenge and delivered her message into Beauregard's hands.

With quick decision Beauregard called his aide and dispatched the news to the President at Richmond:

"I have positive information direct from Washington that the enemy will move in force across the Potomac on Manassas via Fairfax Court House and Centreville. I urge the immediate concentration of all available forces on my lines."

The Southern commander began his preparations to receive the attack.

The house on Church Hill had not been idle. Richmond swarmed with Federal spies under the skillful guidance of Socola.

General Scott knew in Washington within twenty-four hours that Beauregard was planting his men behind the Bull Run River in a position of great strength and that the formation of the ground was such with Bull Run on his front that his dislodgment would be a tremendous task.

The advance of the Federal army was delayed—delayed until the last gun and scrap of machinery from Harper's Ferry had been safely housed in Richmond and Fayetteville and Johnston had withdrawn his army to Winchester in closer touch with Beauregard.

And still the Union army did not move. Beauregard sent a trusted scout into Washington to Mrs. Greenhow with a scrap of paper on which was written in cipher the two words:

"Trust Bearer—"

He arrived at the moment she had received the long sought information of the date of the army's march. She glanced at the stolid masked face of the messenger and hesitated a moment.

"You are a Southerner?"

Donellan smiled.

"I've spent most of my life in Washington, Madam," he said frankly. "I was a clerk in the Department of the Interior. I cast my fortunes with the South."

It was enough. Her keen intuitions had scented danger in the man's manner, his walk and personality. He was not a typical Southerner. The officials of the Secret Service Bureau had already given her evidence of their suspicious. She could not be too careful.

She seized her pen and hastily wrote in cipher:

"Order issued for McDowell to move on Manassas to-night."

She handed the tiny scrap of paper to Donellan.

"My agents will take you in a buggy with relays of horses down the Potomac to a ferry near Dumfries. You will be ferried across."

The man touched his hat.

"I'll know the way from there, Madam."

The scout delivered his message into Beauregard's hands that night before eight o'clock.

At noon the next day Colonel Jordan had placed in her hands his answer:

"Yours received at eight o'clock. Let them come. We are ready. We rely upon you for precise information. Be particular as to description and destination of forces and quantity of artillery."

She had not been idle. She was able to write a message of almost equal importance to the one she had dispatched the day before. With quick nervous hand she wrote on another tiny scrap of paper:

"The Federal commander has ordered the Manassas railroad to be cut to prevent the junction of Johnston with Beauregard."

The moment the first authentic information reached President Davis of the purpose to attack Beauregard he immediately urged General Johnston to make his preparations for the juncture of their forces.

And at once the President received confirmation of his fears of his General-in-Chief. Johnston delayed and began a correspondence of voluminous objections.

July 17, on receipt of the dispatch to Beauregard announcing the plan to cut the railroad, the President was forced to send Johnston a positive order to move his army to Manassas. The order was obeyed with a hesitation which imperiled the issue of battle. And while on the march, Beauregard's pickets exchanging shots with McDowell's skirmish line, Johnston began the first of his messages of complaint and haggling to his Chief at Richmond. Jealous of Beauregard's popularity and fearful of his possible insubordination, Johnston telegraphed Davis demanding that his relative rank to Beauregard should be clearly defined before the juncture of their armies.

The question was utterly unnecessary. The promotion of Johnston to the full grade of general could leave no conceivable doubt on such a point. The President realized with a sickening certainty the beginning of a quarrel between the two men, dangerous to the cause of the South. Their failure to act in harmony would make certain the defeat of the raw recruits on their first field of battle.

He decided at the earliest possible moment to go in person and prevent this threatened quarrel. Already blood had flowed. With a strong column of infantry, artillery and cavalry McDowell had attempted to force the approaches to one of the fords of Bull Run. They were twice driven back and withdrew from the field. Longstreet's brigade had lost fifteen killed and fifty-three wounded in holding his position.

The President hastened to telegraph his sulking general the explicit definition of rank he had demanded:

Richmond, July 20, 1861.
"General J. E. Johnston,
"Manassas Junction, Virginia.

"You are a General of the Confederate Army possessed of the power attached to that rank. You will know how to make the exact knowledge of Brigadier General Beauregard, as well of the ground as of the troops and preparation avail for the success of the object for which you coöperate. The zeal of both assures me of harmonious action.

"Jefferson Davis."

As a matter of fact the President was consumed with painful anxiety lest there should not be harmonious action if Johnston should reach the field in time for the fight. His own presence was required by law at Richmond on July 20, for the delivery of his message to the assembled Congress. It was impossible for him to leave for the front before Sunday morning the 21st.

The battle began at eight o'clock.

General McDowell's army had moved to this attack hounded by the clamor of demagogues for the immediate capture of Richmond by his "Grand Army."

Every Northern newspaper had dinned into his ears and the ears of an impatient public but one cry for months:

"On to Richmond!"

At last the news was spread in Washington that the army would move and bivouac in Richmond's public square within ten days. The march was to be a triumphal procession. The Washington politicians filled wagons and carriages with champagne to celebrate the victory. Tickets were actually printed and distributed for a ball in Richmond. The army was accompanied by long lines of excited spectators to witness the one grand struggle of the war—Congressmen, toughs from the saloons, gaudy ladies from questionable resorts, a clamoring, perspiring rabble bent on witnessing scenes of blood.

The Union General's information as to Beauregard's position and army was accurate and full. He knew that Johnston's command of ten thousand men had begun to arrive the day before. He did not know that half of them were still tangled up somewhere on the railroad waiting for transportation. Even with Johnston's entire command on the ground his army outnumbered the Southerners and his divisions of seasoned veterans from the old army and his matchless artillery gave him an enormous advantage.

With consummate skill he planned the battle and began its successful execution.

His scouts had informed him that the Southern line was weak on its left wing resting on the Stone Bridge across the river. Here the long drawn line of Beauregard's army thinned to a single regiment supported at some distance by a battalion. Here the skillful Union General determined to strike.

At two-thirty before daylight his dense lines of enthusiastic men swung into the dusty moonlit road for their movement to flank the Confederate left.

Swiftly and silently the flower of McDowell's army, eighteen thousand picked men, moved under the cover of the night to their chosen crossing at Sudley's Ford, two miles beyond the farthest gray picket of Beauregard's left.

Tyler's division was halted at the Stone Bridge on which the lone regiment of Col. Evans lay beyond the stream. He was ordered to feign an attack on that point while the second and third divisions should creep cautiously along a circuitous road two miles above, cross unopposed and slip into the rear of Beauregard's long-drawn left wing, roll it up in a mighty scroll of flame, join Tyler's division as it should sweep across the Stone Bridge and together the three divisions in one solid mass could crush the ten-mile battle line into hopeless confusion.

The plan was skillfully and daringly conceived.

Tyler's division halted at the Stone Bridge and silently formed as the first glow of dawn tinged the eastern hills.

The dull red of the July sun was just coloring the sky with its flame when the second and third divisions crossed Bull Run at Sudley's Ford and began their swift descent upon the rear of the unsuspecting Southern army.

As the sun burst above the hills, a circle of white smoke suddenly curled away from a cannon's mouth above the Stone Bridge and slowly rose in the still, clear morning air. Its sullen roar echoed over the valley. The gray figures on the hill beyond leaped to their feet and looked. Only the artillery was engaged and their shots were falling short.

The Confederates appeared indifferent. The action was too obviously a feint. Colonel Evans was holding his regiment for a clearer plan of battle to develop. From the hilltop on which his men lay he scanned with increasing uneasiness the horizon toward the west. In the far distance against the bright Southern sky loomed the dark outline of the Blue Ridge. The heavy background brought out in vivid contrast the woods and fields, hollows and hills of the great Manassas plain in the foreground.

Suddenly he saw it—a thin cloud of dust rising in the distance. As the rushing wall of sixteen thousand men emerged from the "Big Forest," through which they had worked their way along the crooked track of a rarely used road, the dust cloud flared in the sky with ominous menace.

Colonel Evans knew its meaning. Beauregard's army had been flanked and the long thin lines of his left wing were caught in a trap. When the first rush of the circling host had swept his little band back from the Stone Bridge Tyler's army would then cross and the three divisions swoop down on the doomed men.

Evans suddenly swung his regiment and two field pieces into a new line of battle facing the onrushing host and sent his courier flying to General Bee to ask that his brigade be moved instantly to his support.

When the shock came there were five regiments and six little field pieces in the Southern ranks to meet McDowell's sixteen thousand troops.

With deafening roar their artillery opened. The long dense lines of closely packed infantry began their steady firing in volleys. It sounded as if some giant hand had grasped the hot Southern skies and was tearing their blue canvas into strips and shreds.

For an hour Bee's brigade withstood the onslaught of the two Federal divisions—and then began to slowly fall back before the resistless wall of fire. The Union army charged and drove the broken lines a half mile before they rallied.

Tyler's division now swept across the Stone Bridge and the shattered Confederate left wing was practically surrounded by overwhelming odds. Again the storm burst on the unsupported lines of Bee and drove them three quarters of a mile before they paused.

The charging Federal army had struck something they were destined to feel again on many a field of blood.

General T. J. Jackson had suddenly swung his brigade of five regiments into the breach and stopped the wave of fire.

Bee rushed to Jackson's side.

"General," he cried pathetically, "they are beating us back!"

The somber blue eyes of the Virginian gleamed beneath the heavy lashes:

"Then sir, we will give them the bayonet!"

Bee turned to his hard-pressed men and shouted:

"See Jackson and his Virginians standing like a stone wall! Let us conquer or die!"

The words had scarcely passed his lips when Bee fell, mortally wounded.

Four miles away on the top of a lonely hill sat Beauregard and Johnston befogged in a series of pitiable blunders.

The flanking of the Southern army was a complete and overwhelming surprise. Johnston, unacquainted with the ground, had yielded the execution of the battle to his subordinate.

While the two puzzled generals were waiting on their hill top for their orders of battle to be developed on the right they looked to the left and the whole valley was a boiling hell of smoke and dust and flame. Their left flank had been turned and the triumphant enemy was rolling their long line up in a shroud of flame and death.

The two Generals put spurs to their horses and dashed to the scene of action, sending their couriers flying to countermand their first orders. They reached the scene at the moment Bee's and Evans' shattered lines were taking refuge in a wooded ravine and Jackson had moved his men into a position to breast the shock of the enemy's avalanche.

In his excitement Johnston seized the colors of the fourth Alabama regiment and offered to lead them in a charge.

Beauregard leaped from his horse, faced the troops and shouted:

"I have come to die with you!"

The first of the reserves were rushing to the front in a desperate effort to save the day. But in spite of the presence of the two Commanding Generals, in spite of the living stone wall Jackson had thrown in the path of the Union hosts, a large part of the crushed left wing could not be stopped and in mad panic broke for the rear toward Manassas Junction.

The fate of the Southern army hung on the problem of holding the hill behind Jackson's brigade. On its bloody slopes his men crouched with rifles leveled and from them poured a steady flame into the ranks of the charging Union columns.

Beauregard led the right wing of his newly formed battle line and Jackson the center in a desperate charge. The Union ranks were pierced and driven, only to reform instantly and hurl their assailants back to their former position. Charge and counter-charge followed in rapid and terrible succession.

The Confederates were being slowly overwhelmed. The combined Union divisions now consisted of an enveloping battle line of twenty thousand infantry, seven companies of cavalry and twenty-four pieces of artillery, while behind them yet hung ten thousand reserves eager to rush into action.

Beauregard's combined forces defending the hill were scarcely seven thousand men. At two o'clock the desperate Southern commander succeeded in bringing up additional regiments from his right wing. Two brigades at last were thrown into the storm center and a shout rose from the hard-pressed Confederates. Again they charged, drove the Union hosts back and captured a battery of artillery.

The hill was saved and the enemy driven across the turnpike into the woods.

McDowell now hurried in a division of his reserves and reformed his battle line for the final grand assault. Once more he demonstrated his skill by throwing his right wing into a wide circling movement to envelop the Confederate position on its left flank.

The scene was magnificent. As far as the eye could reach the glittering bayonets of the Union infantry could be seen sweeping steadily through field and wood flanked by its cavalry. Beauregard watched the cordon of steel draw around his hard-pressed men and planted his regiments with desperate determination to hurl them back.

Far off in the distance rose a new cloud of dust in the direction of the Manassas railroad. At their head was lifted a flag whose folds drooped in the hot, blistering July air. They were moving directly on the rear of McDowell's circling right wing.

If they were Union reserves the day was lost.

The Southerner lifted his field glasses and watched the drooping flag now shrouded in dust—now emerging in the blazing sun. His glasses were not strong enough. He could not make out its colors.

Beauregard turned to Colonel Evans, whose little regiment had fought with sullen desperation since sunrise.

"I can't make out that flag. If it's Patterson's army from the valley—God help us—"

"It may be Elzey and Kirby Smith's regiments," Evans replied. "They're lost somewhere along the road from Winchester."

Again Beauregard strained his eyes on the steadily advancing flag. It was a moment of crushing agony.

"I'm afraid it's Patterson's men. We must fall back on our last reserve—"

He quickly lowered his glasses.

"I haven't a courier left, Colonel. You must help me—"

"Certainly, General."

"Find Johnston, and ask him to at once mass the reserves to support and protect our retreat—"

Evans started immediately to execute the order.

"Wait!" Beauregard shouted.

His glasses were again fixed on the advancing flag. A gust of wind suddenly flung its folds into the bright Southern sky line—the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy!

"Glory to God!" the commander exclaimed. "They're our men!"

The dark face of the little General flashed with excitement as he turned to Evans:

"Ride, Colonel—ride with all your might and order General Kirby Smith to press his command forward at double quick and strike that circling line in the flank and rear!"

There were but two thousand in the advancing column but the moral effect of their sudden assault on the rear of the advancing victorious men, unconscious of their presence, would be tremendous. A charge at the same moment by his entire army confronting the enemy might snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat.

Beauregard placed himself at the head of his hard-pressed front, and waited the thrilling cry of Smith's men. At last it came, the heaven-piercing, hell-quivering, Rebel yell—the triumphant cry of the Southern hunter in sight of his game!

Jackson, Longstreet and Early with sudden rush of tigers sprang at the throats of the Union lines in front.

The men had scarcely gripped their guns to receive the assault when from the rear rose the unearthly yell of the new army swooping down on their unprotected flank.

It was too much for the raw recruits of the North. They had marched and fought with dogged courage since two o'clock before day—without pause for food or drink. It was now four in the afternoon and the blazing sun of July was pouring its merciless rays down on their dust-covered and smoke-grimed faces without mercy.

McDowell's right wing was crumpled like an eggshell between the combined charges front and rear. It broke and rushed back in confusion on his center. The whole army floundered a moment in tangled mass. In vain their officers shouted themselves hoarse proclaiming their victory and ordering them to rally.

Wild, hopeless, senseless, unreasoning panic had seized the Union army. They threw down their guns in thousands and started at breakneck speed for Washington. With every jump they cursed their idiotic commanders for leading them blindfolded into the jaws of hell. At least they had common sense enough left to save what was left.

The fields were covered with black swarms of flying soldiers. They cut the horses from the gun carriages, mounted them and dashed forward trampling down the crazed mobs on foot.

As the shouting, screaming throng rushed at the Cub Run bridge, a well directed shot from Kemper's battery smashed a team of horses that were crossing. The wagon was upset and the bridge choked.

In mad efforts to force a passage mob piled on mob until the panic enveloped every division of the army that thirty minutes before was sweeping with swift, sure tread to its final victorious charge.

Across every bridge and ford of Bull Run the panic-stricken thousands rushed pellmell, horse, foot, artillery, wagons, ambulances, excursion carriages, red-jowled politicians mingling with screaming women whose faces showed death white through the rouge on their lips and cheeks.

For three miles rolled the dark tide of ruin and confusion—with not one Confederate soldier in sight.

It was three o'clock before the train bearing the anxious Confederate President and his staff drew into Manassas Junction. He had heard no news from the front and feared the worst. The long deep boom of the great guns told him that the battle was raging.

From the car window he saw rising an ominous cloud of dust rapidly approaching the Junction. To his trained eye it could mean but one thing—retreat.

He sprang from the car and asked its meaning of a pale trembling youth in disheveled, torn gray uniform.

Billy Barton turned his bloodshot eyes on the President. His teeth were chattering.

"M-m-eaning of w-what?" he stammered.

"That cloud of dust coming toward the station?"

Billy stared in the direction the President pointed.

"Why, that's the—the—w-w-wagoners—they're trying to save the pieces I reckon—"

"The army has been pushed back?" the President asked.

"No, sir—they—they never p-p-ushed 'em back! They—they just jumped right on top of 'em and made hash out of 'em where they stood! Thank God a few of us got away."

The President turned with a gesture of impatience to an older man, dust-covered and smoke-smeared.

"Can you direct me to General Beauregard's headquarters?"

"Beauregard's dead!" he shouted, rushing toward the train to board it for home. "Johnston's dead. Bee's dead. Bartow's dead. They're all dead—piled in heaps—fur ez ye eye kin see. Take my advice and get out of here quick."

Without waiting for an answer he scrambled into the coach from which the President had alighted.

The station swarmed now with shouting, gesticulating, panic-stricken men from the front. They crowded around the conductor.

"Pull out of this!"

"Crowd on steam!"

"Save your engine and your train, man!"

"And take us with you for God's sake!"

The President pushed his way through the crowd.

"I must go on, Conductor—the train is the only way to reach the field—"

"I'm sorry, sir," the conductor demurred. "I'm responsible for the property of the railroad—"

The panic-stricken men backed him up.

"What's the use?"

"The battle's lost!"

"The whole army's wiped off the earth."

"There's not a grease spot left!"

The President confronted the trembling conductor:

"Will you move your train?"

"I can't do it, sir—"

"Will you lend me your engine?"

The conductor's face brightened.

"I might do that."

The engine was detached to the disgust of the panic-stricken men and the cool-headed engineer nodded to the President, pulled his lever and the locomotive shot out of the station and in five minutes Davis alighted with his staff near the battle field. By the guidance of stragglers they found headquarters.

Adjutant General Jordan sent for horses and volunteered to conduct the President to the front.

While they were waiting he turned to Mr. Davis anxiously:

"I think it extremely unwise, sir, for you to take this risk."

The thin lips smiled:

"I'll take the responsibility, General."

The President and his staff mounted and galloped toward the front.

The stragglers came now in droves. They were generous in their warnings.

"Say, men, do ye want to die?"

"You're ridin' straight inter the jaws er death."

"Don't do it, I tell ye!"

The President began to rally the men. As they neared the front he was recognized and the wounded began to cheer.

A big strapping soldier was carrying a slender wounded boy to the rear.

The boy put his trembling hand on the man's shoulder, snatched off his cap and shouted:

"Three cheers for the President! Look, boys, he's here—we'll lick 'em yet!"

The President lifted his hat to the stripling, crying:

"To a hero of the South!"

The storm of battle was now rolling swiftly to the west—its roar growing fainter with each cannon's throb.

The President, sitting his horse with erect tense figure, dashed up the hill to General Johnston:

"How goes the battle, General?"

"We have won, sir," was the sharp curt answer.

"'We have won, sir!' was the short, curt answer."

The President wheeled his horse and rode rapidly into the front lines until stopped by the captain of a command of cavalry.

"You are too near the front, sir, without an escort—"

The President rode beside the captain and watched him form his men for their last charge on the enemy. He inspected the field with growing amazement. For miles the earth was strewn with the wreck of the Northern army—guns, knapsacks, blankets, canteens—and Brooklyn-made handcuffs!

Their defeat had been so sudden, so complete, so overwhelming, it was impossible at first to grasp its meaning.

He passed the rugged figure of Jackson who had won his immortal title of "Stonewall." An aide was binding a cloth about his wounded arm.

The grim General pushed aside his surgeon, raised his battered cap and shouted:

"Hurrah for the President! Ten thousand fresh men and I will be in Washington to-night!"

The President lifted his hat and congratulated him.

The victory of the South was complete and overwhelming. Jefferson Davis breathed a sigh of relief for deliverance. Within two hours he knew that this victory had not been won by superior generalship of his commanding officers. They had been outwitted at every turn and overwhelmed by the plan of battle their wily foe had forced upon them. It had not been won by the superior courage of his men in the battle which raged from sunrise until four o'clock. The broken and disorganized lines of the South and the panic-stricken mob he had met on the way were eloquent witnesses of Northern valor.

His army had been saved from annihilation by the quick wit and daring courage of a single Brigadier General who had moved his five regiments on his own initiative in the nick of time and saved the Confederates from utter rout.

Victory had been snatched at last from the jaws of defeat by an accident. The misfortune of a delayed regiment of Johnston's army was suddenly turned into an astounding piece of luck. The sudden charge of those two thousand men on the flank of the victorious army had produced a panic among tired raw recruits. McDowell was at this moment master of the field. In a moment of insane madness his unseasoned men had thrown down their guns and fled.

The little dark General in his flower-decked tent had made good his boasts. And worse—the Northern army had proven his wildest assertions true. They were a rabble. The star of Beauregard rose in the Southern sky, and with its rise Disaster stalked grim and silent toward the hilarious Confederacy.

The South had won a victory destined to prove itself the most fatal calamity that ever befell a nation.