Jr. Thomas Dixon

“ He had lived a generation since dawn. The years that had gone before seemed a dream. The one real thing was Betty's laughing eyes. They were looking at him now from behind that flaming hill. He must pass those guns to reach her. Not a doubt had yet entered his soul that he would do it. Men were falling around him like leaves in autumn, but this had to be. He saw the end. No matter how fierce this battle, McClellan was only fighting to save his army from annihilation. Lee was destroying him. ”

“ In the big convention to-morrow all will be harmony and peace. The convention will do what these powerful leaders from every State in the North tell them to do.
The assembly is dignified and orderly. The men who compose it are the eyes and ears and brains of the party they represent. They are the real rulers of the Nation. The party will obey their orders. These are the men who do the executive thinking for millions. The millions can only reject or ratify their wills. We are a democracy in theory, but in reality here is assembled the aristocracy of brains which constitutes our government. ”

“ Gilbert Winter rose in the Senate and in thunderous oratory voiced the well-nigh unanimous feeling of the millions of the North of all parties and factions:
"I warn the administration against this dastardly and cowardly surrender to a foreign foe! The voice of the people demand that we stand firm on our dignity as a Sovereign Nation. If the President and his Cabinet refuse to listen they will find themselves engulfed in a fire that will consume them like stubble. They will find themselves helpless before a power that will hurl them from their places!" ”

“ The North has been talking Secession for thirty years, and now that the South is doing what they've been threatening, we wake up and try to persuade ourselves that no such right exists in a sovereign state. Yet we all know that Great Britain surrendered to the thirteen colonies as sovereign states and named each one of them in her articles of surrender and our treaty of peace. We know that there never would have been a Constitution or a Union if the men who drew it and created the Union had dared to question the right of either of these sovereign states to withdraw when they wished. ”

“ Boney paid no attention either to the unexpected assault of his friends or their ignoble desertion. Every ounce of his dog-manhood was up now. It was a battle to the death and he had no wish to live if he couldn't whip any coon that ever made a track in his path.
The Boy's pride was roused now and the fighting instinct that slumbers in every human soul flashed through his excited eyes. He drew near and watched with increasing excitement and joined with his father at last in shouts and cheers.
"Did ye ever see such a dog!" he cried through his tears.
"He beats creation!" ”

“ In the depths of his cavernous eyes there burned a steady flame but few of the men about him saw, or understood if they saw—that flame was something new in the history of the race—a faith in the common man which dared to give a new valuation to the individual and set new standards for the Democracy of the world. He believed that the heart of the masses of the people North, South, East and West was sound at the core and that as their Chief Magistrate he could ultimately appeal to them over the heads of all traditions—all factions, and all accepted leaders. ”

“ Jubal Early, Elzey's brigade, and Stonewall Jackson charged at the same signal—and then—pandemonium!
Blind, unreasoning panic seized the army of the North. They broke and fled. Brave officers cursed and swore in vain. The panic grew. Men rushed pell mell over one another, white with terror. They threw down their muskets, their knapsacks, their haversacks and ran for their lives, every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. In vain the regular army, with splendid discipline, formed a rear guard to effect an orderly retreat. The crack of their guns only made the men run faster. ”

“ I'm going to fight your country and your people. You admire the new President. I despise him. The passions of war have separated us, that's all. But I won't give up. The war can't last long. You'll see things in a different way when it ends."
Betty smiled into his pleading eyes:
"How little you know me, Boy! Nothing on this earth could separate me from the man I love——" she paused and breathed quickly "——I'd follow him blindfold to the bottomless pit once I'd given him my heart!" ”

“ Two soldiers, their ammunition spent, choked each other to death on top of the entrenchment and rolled down its banks among the torn and mangled bodies that filled the ditch.
In the edge of this red whirlwind Ned Vaughan saw a grim man in grey standing beside a tree using two guns. His wounded comrade loaded one while he took deliberate aim and fired the other. With each crack of his musket a man in blue was falling.
In the centre of this mass of struggling maniacs the men were fighting with gun swabs, handspikes, clubbed muskets, stones and fists. ”

“ Lee, with inferior numbers, alert, resourceful, vigilant, had checked and baffled him at every turn, and Richmond's fall was no nearer to human eye than in 1862.
The miles and miles of hospital barracks in Washington, crowded to their doors with wounded, dying men, were the living witnesses of the Nation's mortal agony. Every city, town, village, hamlet and county in the North was in mourning. Death had literally flung its pall over the world.
From these thousands of stricken homes there had slowly risen a storm of protest against the new leader of the Army. ”

“ Many a man in grey crawled over the ragged rocks to press his canteen to the lips of his dying enemy in blue, and many a boy in blue did as much for the man in grey.
Fifteen thousand wounded men lay there through the long black hours.
At ten o'clock a wounded Christian soldier began to sing one of the old, sweet hymns of faith, whose words have come ringing down the ages wet with tears and winged with human hopes. In five minutes ten thousand voices of blue and grey, some of them quivering with the agony of death, had joined. ”

“ The wildest rumors flew from parched tongue to throbbing ear.
An army of a hundred thousand fresh troops had fallen on their tired, bloody ranks. They were led by Jeb Stuart at the head of four thousand Black Horse Cavalry. If a single man escaped alive it would be for one reason, only they could outrun them. It was a crime for officers to try to round them up for a massacre. That's all it was—a massacre! With each mad thought of the rushing mob the panic grew. They cut the traces of horses from guns and left them on the field. ”

“ Tom cried in ecstacy.
They stood and listened. The dogs were still in the woods and with each yelp were coming nearer. Evidently the trail led toward them, but in the rear and almost toward the exact spot at which they had entered the forest.
"Just listen at old Boney!" the Boy cried. "I can tell him now. He can beat 'em all!"
Loud and clear above the chorus of the others rang the long savage boom of Boney's voice, quivering with passion, defiant, daring, sure of victory! It came at regular intervals as if to measure the miles that separated him from the battle he smelled afar. ”

“ The Capital was no longer a city of sixty thousand inhabitants, but a vast frontier post and pay station of the army. And such a pay station! Each day the expenditures of the Government were more than two millions. The air was electric with the mad lust for gain which the scent of millions excites in the nostrils of the wolves who prey on their fellow men. The streets swarmed with these hungry beasts, male and female. They pushed and crowded and jostled each other from the sidewalks. The roar of their whiskey-laden voices poured forth from every bar-room and gambling den on the Avenue. ”

“ A battery of artillery suddenly roared through the streets, the dull heavy rattle of its wheels over the cobblestones, and the crack of the driver's whip echoing and reëchoing through the house. Behind it came the steady tramp, tramp, of a regiment of infantry, the loud call of their volunteer officers ringing sharply their orders at the turn of the street. Far off on the Capitol Hill he heard the sharp note of a bugle and the rattle of horses' hoofs. Every hour the raw troops were pouring into the city from the North, the East and the West. ”

“ It had meant nothing before this reckoning of the dead and wounded after battle—sixty thousand men from the Rapidan to Cold Harbor in thirty days—ten thousand five hundred in the futile dash against Petersburg—four thousand in the crater—five thousand five hundred more now on this torn, twisted railroad, and all a failure—not an inch of ground gained.
These torn and mangled bundles of red rags he had watched the men dump into trenches and cover with dirt had meant nothing real. They were only loathsome things to be hidden from sight before the bugles called the army to move. ”

“ A single decisive victory would turn the tide of public opinion, unite the faction-ridden army and thrill the Nation with enthusiasm.
He determined to fight at once and risk his fate as a commander on the issue of victory or defeat. His council of war had voted against an attack on Lee's army in Fredericksburg. Burnside brushed their decision aside as part of the quarrel McClellan has left. Even the men in the ranks were fighting each other daily in these miserable bickerings and intrigues. A victory was the remedy for their troubles, and he made up his mind to fight for it. ”

“ If his own party leaders were boldly proclaiming such treason to the Union how could he hope to stem the tide that had set in for its ruin?
The thousands of conservative men North and South who voted for Bell and Everett demanded peace at any price. An orator in New York at a great mass meeting dared to say:
"If a revolution of force is to begin it shall be inaugurated at home! It will be just as brutal to send men to butcher our brothers of the South as it will be to massacre them in the Northern States." ”

“ Let us fold up our banners now and smelt the guns—Love rules—let her mightier purpose run!"
So big and generous, so broad and statesmanlike was his spirit that in this hour of victory his personality became in a day the soul of the New Republic. The South had already unconsciously grown to respect the man who had loved yet fought her for what he believed to be her highest good.
He was entering now a new phase of power. His influence over the people was supreme. No man or set of men in Congress, or outside of it, could defeat his policies. ”

“ Every shell that screams from those big guns crashes through my heart. The groans of the wounded, the sighs of the dying, the tears of widows and orphans, of sisters and mothers—all—blue and grey—they are mine. I see and hear it all, feel all, suffer all.
"No man who lives to-day is responsible for this war. I could not have prevented it, nor could Jefferson Davis. We are in the grip of mighty forces sweeping on from the centuries. We are fighting the battle of the ages.
"But our country's worth it if we can only save it. Out of this agony and tears will be born a united people. ”

“ Betty Winter found to her sorrow that the memory of a dead love could be a troublesome thing. Ned Vaughan's tender and compelling passion had been resistless in the moonlight beneath a fragrant apple tree with the old mill wheel splashing its music at their feet. She had returned to her cot in the hospital that night in a glow of quiet, peaceful joy. Life's problem had been solved at last in the sweet peace of a tender and beautiful spiritual love—the only love that could be real. ”

“ The grim dust-covered figure of a Southern Brigadier General on a little sorrel horse had barred the way. His bulging forehead with its sombre blue eyes hung ominously over the pommel of his saddle.
General Bee, of South Carolina, rallying his shattered, broken brigade, pointed his sword to the strange figure and shouted to his men:
"See Jackson standing like a stone wall—rally to the Virginians!"
A bursting shell struck him dead in the next instant, but the world had heard and the name "Stonewall" became immortal. ”

“ The Southern ambulance corps did its best at its new trade. Their long lines of wagons began to creep into Richmond and fill the hospitals. Shivering white-faced women, wives, sweethearts, mothers, sisters were there looking for their own, praying and hoping. All day they had shivered in their rooms at the deep boom of cannon, whose thunder rattled the glass in the windows through which they gazed on the deserted streets. It was the first lesson in real war, this hand to hand grip of the two giants whose struggle must decide the fate of Richmond. ”

“ I know that a few thousand more men would have changed this battle from a defeat to a victory. As it is, the Government must not and cannot hold me responsible for the result. I feel too earnestly to-night. I have seen too many dead and wounded comrades to feel otherwise than that the Government has not sustained this army. If you do not do so now, the game is lost. If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you, or to any other person in Washington. ”

“ They were laughing, drinking, smoking, swearing, gambling and all shouting for the flag—the flag that was waving over millions they hoped yet to share.
A feeling of sickening fear swept the girl's heart. For the first time in her life she was afraid to be alone on the brightly lighted streets of Washington at dusk. The poison of death was in the air. Every desperate passion that stirs the brute in man was written in the bloodshot eyes that sought hers. The Nation was at war. ”