They marched through settlements of frowning, hostile, alienated countrymen, with a dagger in each frown and a stab in every stare, toward the embattled hosts of a rebellious confederacy fiercely armed for the conflict against right and light. They marched through ignorance and barbarism and instruments of cruel bondage; through the snap of the lash and the sizz of the branding iron; through writhing iniquities and paths piled high with iron chains; through city streets and country roads; through horrid prison pens, o'er bloody battle-fields, past pyramids of skulls,--up to the shining heights of fame. They camped in cottonfield and canebrake; in groves of magnolia and myrtle; in still forests where jack-pots were juicy; in flowering suburbs where sweet hams blossomed in the smoke-house and fat turkeys ripened in the open air; on the levees of murmuring rivers and the shores of the tossing sea. They camped on plantations and left them desolate, where their devouring camp-fires and their patriotic appetites wrought piteous ruin through wide landscapes of fertile plenteousness. They camped in shelter tents of microcosmic cut and altruistic design; in huts composite, whereof logs, brush, mud, boards and straw in varying proportions furnish the picturesque materials; or, tentless, hutless, houseless, lay exposed to visits from alleged pearly dew and so-called crystal raindrops, winked at all through the long night-watches by the shimmering stars. They camped in barracks grimed with the smoke and smear of previous occupants, who departing left behind them sociable swarms of their closest friends, ready to extend from every crack and crevice an incisive welcome; in bastioned forts, constantly exposed to imminent explosions from burrowing enemies, hilarious in undiscoverable tunnels far below. They camped with controversial comrades loaded on all topics from justification by faith to the cremation of garbage; with comrades wearing periodically the outward and visible signs of an inward and spirituous exhilaration, to whom all paths of glory lead but to the grass, and whose nocturnal slumbers yield a resonance with terror-smiting combination of college yell and Indian war-whoop. They camped unwelcome amid prejudices and hatreds inveterate; amid revilings incessant and intense; exposed to sneers in which the curled lip of beauty impinged against a nose sniffing with scorn; but they camped to stay, and they dispensed with welcome, as with other comforts and luxuries multifold. The swelling chorus of their war songs rent the sky, like the long, loud shout of jubilee which rises when sundry millions of citizens, who have not dined regularly under a revenue tariff regime, have tardily come to their senses, and voted for three square meals a day.