I saw some of it to-day, and it made my blood go!
I saw a poet, young, sensitive, throbbing at the old, old wrong, at the black shame of our history; I saw him drawn into that fearful whirlpool of blood and passion, driven mad with the pain and the horror of it; and I saw him drilled and hammered to a grim savageness, saw him fighting, day by day, with his spirit, forging it into an iron sword of war. He was haggard and hollow-eyed, hard, ruthless, desperate. He saw into the future, he saw the land he loved, the land he dreamed of—the Union! She stretched out her arms to him; she cried with the voices of unborn ages, she wrung her hands in the agony of her despair. And for her his heart beat, for her he was a madman, for her he marched in sun and in snow, for her he was torn and slashed, for her he waded through fields of slaughter. Of her he dreamed and sung—sung to the camps in the night-time, till armies were thrilled with his singing.
This was the thing of which he sang, the gaunt, grim poet: There is a monster, huge beyond thought, terrible, all-destroying; the name of it is Rebellion, and the end of it is Death! Day by day you grapple with it, day by day you hammer it, day by day you crush it. Down with it, down with it! Finish it!
I heard that as a battle-cry: “Finish it!” I saw a man, wild and war-frenzied, riding a war-frenzied horse; he rode at the head of a squadron, bare-headed, sword in hand, demon-like—thundering down-hill upon a mass of men, stabbing, slashing, trampling, scattering! Above the roar of it all I heard his cry: “Finish it! Finish it!”
And afterward he staggered from his horse and knelt by the men he had killed, and wept.
—I saw him again. It was when the man of the hour had come at last; when the monster had met his master; when, day by day, they hammered it, the fire-spitting, death-dealing monster; when they closed with it in death-grapple in a tangled wilderness, where armies fought like demons in the dark, and the wounded were burned by the thousands. I saw companies of fainting, starving, agonized men, retreating, still battling, day by day; and I saw the wild horseman galloping on their track, slashing, trampling—and still with the battle-yell: “Finish it! Finish it!”
I saw him yet a third time. It was done, it was finished; and he lay wounded in a dark room, listening. Outside in the streets of Washington a great endless army marched by, the army of victory, of salvation; and the old war-flags waved, and the old war-songs echoed, and he heard the trampling of ten thousand feet—the rumbling of the old cannon—and the ocean-roaring of the vast throngs of men! A wild delirium of victory throbbed in his soul,—burned him up, as he lay there alone, dying of his passion and his wounds. Born of the joy that throbbed in the air about him, born of the waving banners and the clashing trumpets and the trampling hosts and the shouting millions—a figure loomed up before him—a figure with eyes of flame and a form that towered like the mountains—with arms outstretched in rapture and robes that touched the corn-fields as she sped—angel, prophetess, goddess!—Liberty!