It is easy for us to prate, at this distance from those times of trial to brave men’s souls, of the high and sacred duty of living and, if need be, of dying for the right. From our standpoint, it is as clear as the noonday sun, that allegiance to the general government should outrank allegiance to the State in which one has chanced to be born and to live. We have had an awful object-lesson in the study of that creed since the day when the Virginian, who saw his native State invaded, believed that he had no alternative but to “strike for his altars and his fires.” Upon the gallant fellows who, seeing this, and no further, risked their lives unto the death, fell the penalty of the demagogues’ sin. _We_ may surely lay the blame where it belongs. XXXIX “THE LAST THROUGH TRAIN FOR FOUR YEARS” I COPY in substance, and sometimes verbatim, the account written in 1861, and published later, of our journey northward in the last train that went through to Washington before the outbreak of hostilities. I preface the narrative by saying that, by the merciful provision of the Divine Father, Who will not try us beyond our strength, we, one and all, kept up to our own hearts the sanguine incredulity in the possibility of the worst coming to pass, which was characteristic of Union lovers at the South, up to the battle of Manassas. After that, the scales fell from all eyes. Had not my mother hoped confidently that the war-cloud would blow over, and that, before long, she would not have allowed Alice to go back to Newark with us? My place was with my husband, but this young daughter she had the right to keep with her. Had I not hoped for a peaceful solution of the national problem, if only through the awakening of the fraternal love of those whose fathers had fought, shoulder to shoulder, to wrest their country from a common oppressor, I could not have said “Good-bye” smilingly to home and kindred. When I said to my mother: “We shall have you with us at the seashore, this summer,” it was not in bravado, to cheat her into belief in my cheerfulness. Our party of Mr. Terhune, Alice, our boy and baby Christine, with their nurse and myself, was comfortably bestowed in the train that was to meet the boat at Acquia Creek. Luggage and luncheon were looked after as sedulously as if there were no superior interest in our minds. The very commonplaceness of the details of getting ready and sending us off, exactly as had been done, time and time again, were in themselves heartening. What had been, would be. To-morrow should be as to-day. When we and our appurtenances were comfortably bestowed in the ladies’ car (there were no parlor cars or sleepers, as yet), I had leisure to note what was passing without. The scene should be that which always attends the departure of a passenger train from a provincial city. Yet I felt, at once, that there was a difference.