Hark! was there muttering thunder in the heavens?--thunder from a sky hitherto all bright blue? Business men, going down town on the morning of the twenty-eighth of June, found that "fighting had commenced before Richmond," and that "McClellan was changing his front." That "change of front" looked ominous. A few read the secret at once--that heavy reinforcements had come into Richmond from the half-disbanded rebel army Halleck had checked but not defeated at Corinth; and coupled with strange rumors of this came hints about "Stonewall Jackson," which indicated to the same persons that that rebel officer had advanced from the North-west and made an attempt to take McClellan's right wing in flank, necessitating a retrograde movement of that wing to bring him in front. Still, confidence was not lost, in McClellan or in the army. While his right wing fell back before an attack in force, his left might swing in towards Richmond and even take the city--who could say? Then the telegraph closed down, and the morning papers contained "no later intelligence" from the field before Richmond. This was "the feather that broke the camel's back" of the national spirit. The government had no confidence in the people--it dared not trust them with the truth--it dared conceal! Our army was being cut to pieces, and we were permitted to know nothing of the calamity except the dreadful fact. No development could have been so injurious as this concealment--no stroke at the national confidence so deadly as the want of reliance shown by the government censors. The nation's heart went down beneath the blow: to this day[6] it has never risen to the same proud and courageous determination shown through all previous disasters. [Footnote 6: January, 1863.]