"For God's sake, beg the Administration and the North not to let us be crushed out!"
We hoped to take the Philadelphia cars, twenty-six miles out, but a detachment of Baltimore soldiers that very morning had passed up the railroad, destroying every bridge; smoke was still rising from their ruins. We were compelled to press on and on, until, in the evening, after a ride of forty-six miles, we reached York, Pennsylvania.
The North Fully Aroused.
Here, at last, we could breathe freely. But both railroads being monopolized by troops, we were compelled, wearily, to drive on to the village of Columbia, on the Susquehanna river. There we began to see that the North, as well as the South, was under martial rule. Armed sentinels peremptorily ordered us to halt.
On identifying the driver, and learning my business, they allowed us to proceed. At the bridge, the person in charge declined to open the gate:
"I guess you can't cross to-night, sir," said he.
I replied by "guessing" that we could; but he continued:
"Our orders are positive, to let no one pass who is not personally known to us."
He soon became convinced that I was not an emissary of the enemy; and the sentinels escorted us across the bridge, a mile and a quarter in length. We proceeded undisturbed to Lancaster, arriving there at two o'clock, after a carriage-ride of seventy miles. Thence to New York, communication was undisturbed.
The cold-blooded North was fully aroused. Rebel sympathizers found themselves utterly swept away by a Niagara of public indignation. In Pennsylvania, in New York, in New England, I heard only the sentiment that talking must be ended, and acting begun; that, cost what it might, in money and blood, all must unite to crush the gigantic Treason which was closing its fangs upon the throat of the Republic.