I hoped to remain several days, but the public frenzy had grown so uncontrollable, that every stranger was subjected to espionage. One could hardly pick up a newspaper without seeing, or stand ten minutes in a public place without hearing, of the arrest of some northerner, charged with being a spy. While the lines of retreat were yet open, it was judicious to flee from the wrath to come.
Designing to stop for a while in North Carolina, whose Rip Van Winkle sleep seemed proof against any possible convulsion, I took the midnight train northward. A number of Baltimoreans on board were returning home, after assisting at the capture of Sumter. They were voluble and boisterous Rebels, declaring in good set terms that Maryland would shortly be revolutionized, Governor Hicks and Henry Winter Davis hanged, and President Lincoln driven out of Washington. They averred with great vehemence and iteration that the Yankees were all cowards, and could easily be "whipped out;" but when one, whose denunciations had been peculiarly bitter, was asked:
The Country on Fire.
"Are you going home through Washington?"
"Not I," was the reply. "Old Abe might have us nabbed!'"
We were soon on the clayey soil of the Old North State, which, to the eye, closely resembles those regions of Ohio near Lake Erie. Hour after hour, we rode through the deep forests of tall pines, from which the bark had been stripped for making rosin and turpentine.
My anticipations of quiet proved altogether delusive. President Lincoln's Proclamation, calling for seventy-five thousand soldiers, had just arrived by telegraph, and the country was on fire. It was the first flush of excitement here, and the feeling was more intense and demonstrative than in those States which had become accustomed to the Revolution. Forts were being seized, negroes and white men impressed to labor upon them, military companies forming, clergymen taking up the musket, and women encouraging the determination to fight the "Abolitionists." All Union sentiment was awed into utter silence.
While the train was stopping at Wilmington, a telegram, announcing that Virginia had passed a Secession ordinance, was received with yells of applause. Sitting alone at one end of the car, I observed three fellow-passengers, with whom I had formed a traveling acquaintance, conferring earnestly. Their frequent glances toward me indicated the subject of the conversation. As I had said nothing to define my political position, I resolved to set myself right at once, should they put me to the test. One of them approached me, and remarked:
"We just have news that Virginia has seceded."