The close of the three days’ struggle at Gettysburg left Bryant confident that the turning point of the war had been passed. “There is every reason to hope that the rebel army of Virginia will never recross the Potomac as an army,” he said on July 6; but whether Lee crossed it or not, “the rebellion has received a staggering blow, from which it would scarcely seem possible for it to recover.” The next day he insisted that the rebels be followed at once and destroyed, but in his exultation he accepted philosophically Meade’s failure to advance. II At this moment of rejoicing over Gettysburg and Vicksburg the city was horrified and humiliated by the Draft Riots, a sharp reminder that the home front was only less important than the battle front. Of this fact the _Evening Post_ had never lost sight. Bryant’s editorials always held in view the necessity of sustaining the spirits of the North. For every “radical” utterance criticizing the Administration’s faults there were ten exhorting the people to support its central aims. In the first months of the war he published two martial lyrics, one addressed to European enemies who hoped for the ruin of the republic, and one a plea for enlistment: Few, few were they whose swords of old Won the fair land in which we dwell; But we are many, we who hold The grim resolve to guard it well. Strike, for that broad and goodly land, Blow after blow, till men shall see That Might and Right move hand in hand, And glorious must their triumph be! It was natural for New York city to have a lusty anti-war press when the struggle for the Union began. It had been Democratic since Jackson’s time, and remained Democratic during the Civil War. Its social connections with the South had always been close, while till 1860 its merchants and bankers had stronger business ties with the South than with the West. After the war began many Southern sympathizers, refugees from the border States, settled in the city. But the capture of Fort Sumter turned all that indifference to the secession movement which William H. Russell had noted a few weeks earlier into a passionate enthusiasm of the majority for the Federal cause. At 3 p. m. on April 18, the day the first troops passed through New York southward, an excited crowd gathered before the _Express_ office and demanded a display of the American flag. It surged up Park Row and made the same demand of the _Day Book_ and _Daily News_ (the latter Fernando Wood’s organ), and thence poured down Nassau Street and Broadway to the _Journal of Commerce_ building, which also hurried out a flag. Already the _Herald_ had decorated its windows with bunting. The Monday after Sumter, Bennett had braved popular feeling with another demand for peace, but now he hurried to Washington, pledged his support of the Union to President Lincoln, and saw that beginning with the _Herald_ for April 17, that policy was adopted.