I replied, with considerable emphasis: "Good! That will give us all the border States."
Apparently satisfied, he returned to his friends, and they said no more to me upon the all-absorbing question.
Submitting to Rebel Scrutiny.
A fragment of conversation which occurred near me, will illustrate the general tone of remark. A young man observed to a gentleman beside him:
"We shall have possession of Washington before the first of June."
"Do you think so? Lincoln is going to call out an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men."
"Oh, well, we can whip them out any morning before breakfast. Throw three or four shells among those blue-bellied Yankees and they will scatter like a flock of sheep!"
Up to this day I had earnestly hoped that a bloody conflict between the two sections might be averted; but these remarks were so frequent—the opinion that northerners were unmitigated cowards seemed so universal,[8] that I began to look with a great deal of complacency upon the prospect which the South enjoyed of testing this faith. It was time to ascertain, once for all, whether these gentlemen of the cotton and the canebrake were indeed a superior race, destined to wield the scepter, or whether their pretensions were mere arrogance and swagger.
It seemed impossible for the southern mind to comprehend that he who never blusters, or flourishes the bowie-knife, who will endure a great deal before fighting, who would rather suffer a wrong than do a wrong, is, when roused, the most dangerous of adversaries—a fact so universal, that it has given us the proverb, "Beware the fury of a patient man."
The North Heard From.