The captains of the dreadnaughts, when they saw the end had come, swung their prows into the teeth of our fleet and sank with colors flying. On the day our army marched into Boston with bands playing “The Star Spangled Banner,” three hundred thousand Bostonians stood in silence and tears and watched them pass the old State House, along Columbus Avenue, up Tremont Street and through Beacon to the steps of the Capitol. There they stood for hours and sang “My Country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of Liberty, Of thee I sing.” The President and his Cabinet, released from Fort Warren, reviewed our victorious fleet the following day. There were no vulgar cheers. Their souls were stirred to greater depths. When the triumphal procession swung past the old Armory on the East Side of New York, Virginia Holland, with Zonia and Marya, rode at the head of a division of fifty thousand Daughters of Jael. The orderly outrider on her left was a slender Italian mother, on whose breast was pinned a tiny blood-stained flag of the Republic. * * * * * Congress met in December. The Senate used the East Room of the Executive Mansion, the House of Representatives met in the Belasco Theater. These two buildings stood intact. John Vassar was elected speaker of the House without a dissenting voice. His bride from her seat in the gallery watched through tear-dimmed eyes as he took his seat on the dais, and two wistful girls, with smiling faces, sat beside her. The first bill for consideration was passed without debate in just the time it took to call the roll--the bill which Vassar had introduced five years before--providing for a mobile army of citizen soldiers of a million men with heavy artillery and perfect equipment. The cost of our defeat and humiliation with two years of slavery had been more than thirty billions of the wealth of the people. This fabulous sum could have been saved by a paltry half billion invested in a navy. Taught wisdom at last in the school of defeat, a mighty nation lifted her head and girded her loins for a glorious future. * * * * * Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: Virginia hestitated=> Virginia hesitated {pg 81} upset Vassar’s equanamity=> upset Vassar’s equanimity {pg 91} shook the boy ficercely=> shook the boy fiercely {pg 136} crush Amercan democracy=> crush American democracy {pg 166} Emperor of Austra-Hungary=> Emperor of Austria-Hungary {pg 180} hugh column of water=> huge column of water {pg 226} care whch way=> care which way {pg 241} his word clanking=> his sword clanking {pg 290} over Zonia’s soulders=> over Zonia’s shoulders {pg 290} A A fleet=> A fleet {pg 312} End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fall of a Nation, by Thomas Dixon