Two days after the departure of the Seventh regiment, the Seventy-first, since renowned for its bravery at Bull Run, the Sixth, and Twelfth, all city regiments of New York, took the same glorious track, and were hailed with like enthusiasm. In military drill and social position, some of these regiments were not inferior to the Seventh, and their departure was witnessed by a concourse of people equal to that which filled the streets on the 19th.
It was with pride that a city saw her first quota of soldiers departing en route for Washington, to take the Empire share with the troops of other loyal states in the contest now inaugurated. The spectacle, instead of being a great pageant, had all the grandeur and solemnity of a step in one of those crises of events which involve individual and national life—engraving new names and new dynasties upon the tablets of history.
As if to make the departure of these troops more memorable, a large American flag, forty feet long by twenty wide, was flung out upon a flagstaff from a window in Trinity steeple, at a height of two hundred and forty feet. The chimes meanwhile played several airs appropriate to the occasion, among which were “Yankee Doodle,” “The Red, White and Blue,” winding up with “All’s Well.” A flagstaff with a splendid flag attached, was also run out of a window over the portico in front of St. Paul’s Church. Thus under these mighty banners, furling and unfurling in the wind and hedged in by triple walls of human beings, amid the resonant chimes of Trinity, the crash of their own magnificent bands drowning the “God bless you” of many a gentle heart, the city of New York sent its first regiments to the field.
As each regiment passed through New York the concourse of people to see it off increased, till every fresh march was a triumph in advance of the brave deeds the soldiers were expected to perform. In less than a week banners and flags had become so thick across Broadway, that they fairly canopied the departing troops, and shouts loud and deep sent them on the way with many a blessing and hearty God speed.
Nor was this enthusiasm confined to crack regiments or the aristocratic soldiery of our cities. The working-men also came forth in masses, claiming a share in the glorious work. Of this class was the Sixth Massachusetts regiment, which had just baptized its colors in the streets of Baltimore, taking lead even of the chivalric regiments of the Empire City. Of this class was the thrice glorious Sixty-ninth, as brave a body of warmhearted Irishmen as ever trod the earth. Perhaps the greatest crowd that ever gathered to see a regiment off assembled when this body of adopted citizens marched forth under the star-spangled banner and the green flag of old Ireland. On that day human nature acknowledged its own universal kinship. The work-shop and the counting-room, the parlor and the basement met for once on a level of noble enthusiasm. The palace and the tenement house gave forth their inmates alike, for it was a common country which these men went forth to defend with their strength and, alas, their lives.
Proud mothers and wives and sisters, who had watched their beloved ones march off in the ranks of some favorite regiment, looked down from balconies and windows with tearful eyes upon the crowd of women who lined the pavements.
More particularly was this manifest on the departure of the Sixty-ninth. What warm, true hearts crowded the pavements that day! Old women, little children, whole households clung together, sorrowful but O, how proud of the valor that filled their eyes with tears.
If there was weeping on the pavement, it was answered with a feeling of gentle sisterhood from the balcony and window. The same bright eyes that had seen the Seventh, Seventy-first, Twelfth and other regiments pass, through a mist of tears, filled with sympathetic moisture when they saw these poor wives and mothers break through all restraint and rush wildly into the ranks for one more kiss, a hand-clasp, or, if no more, a last glance of loving recognition.
Perhaps some of these highly bred females envied the social freedom which allowed these women of the people to follow their husbands and brothers up to the moment of embarkation, without a thought of the world beyond. Many an embroidered handkerchief was waved, and many a sweet blessing murmured in gentle sympathy with these sister women when those hard-working, hard fighting, gloriously brave men went forth to earn imperishable renown.
Not only in New York, but all over the North and West these ovations were repeated. Boston Common was one scene of mustering forces, and its streets a panorama of armed men. Every State over which the blessed old star-spangled banner flung its folds, sent forth its sons, only complaining that so few were accepted. Like a prairie fire when the grass is dry, the war spirit leaped from town to town, and from State to State, till the whole North was ablaze with it.