Love stories; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
The dark tide of invasion rose higher and higher. At last the tidings
came that Lee's whole army was in Pennsylvania, that Harrisburg
would be attacked before night, and that the enemy were threatening
Columbia on the northern bank of the Susquehanna, and would have
crossed the immense bridge which there spans the river, had it not
been burned.
On the 27th, the Tribune contained the following editorial words:
"Now is the hour. Pennsylvania is at length arousing, we trust not
too late. We plead with the entire North to rush to the rescue; the
whole North is menaced through this invasion. It we do not stop it
at the Susquehanna, it will soon strike us on the Delaware, then
on the Hudson."
"My chance is coming," Merwyn muttered, grimly, as he read these
words. "If the answering counter-revolution does not begin during
the next few days, I shall take my rifle and fight as a citizen as
long as there is a rebel left on Northern soil."
The eyes of others were turned towards Pennsylvania; he scanned
the city in which he dwelt. He had abandoned all morbid brooding,
and sought by every means in his power to inform himself in regard
to the seething, disloyal elements that were now manifesting
themselves. From what Mr. Vosburgh had told him, and from what he
had discovered himself, he felt that any hour might witness bloody
co-operation at his very door with the army of invasion.
"Should this take place," he exclaimed, as he paced his room, "oh
that it might be my privilege, before I died, to perform some deed
that would convince Marian Vosburgh that I am not what she thinks
me to be!"
Each new day brought its portentous news. On the 30th of June, there
were accounts of intense excitement at Washington and Baltimore,
for the enemy had appeared almost at the suburbs of these cities.
In Baltimore, women rushed into the streets and besought protection.
New York throbbed and rocked with kindred excitement.
On July 3d, the loyal Tribune again sounded the note of deep alarm:
"These are times that try men's souls! The peril of our country's
overthrow is great and imminent. The triumph of the rebels
distinctly and unmistakably involves the downfall of republican
and representative institutions."
By a strange anomaly multitudes of the poor, the oppressed in other
lands, whose hope for the future was bound up in the cause of the
North, were arrayed against it. Their ignorance made them dupes
and tools, and enemies of human rights and progress were prompt to
use them. On the evening of this momentous 3d of July, a manifesto,
in the form of a handbill, was extensively circulated throughout
the city. Jeff Davis himself could not have written anything more
disloyal, more false, of the Union government and its aims, or
better calculated to incite bloody revolution in the North.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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