But the exciting events immediately preceding the War of the Great Rebellion, so stirred his patriotic soul, that he turned his thought and work into patriotic channels, and worked on until late in the spring of 1861. His words in the newspapers, in the magazines, and on the rostrum, were ringing trumpet-calls to the defence of the Republic. The Chinese say that “there are words which are deeds.” That could be said of those Mr. Taylor uttered. His public addresses were enthusiastic appeals for the salvation of the nation, and his poems had in them the boldest spirit of patriotism. In his poem, “Through Baltimore,” written in April, 1861, he described the approach of the Union soldiers to Baltimore, the onset of the mob, and closed the story with these words:— “No, never! By that outrage black, A solemn oath we swore, To bring the Keystone’s thousands back, Strike down the dastards who attack, And leave a red and fiery track Through Baltimore! Bow down, in haste, thy guilty head! God’s wrath is swift and sore: The sky with gathering bolts is red,— Cleanse from thy skirts the slaughter shed, Or make thyself an ashen bed, O Baltimore!” On the 30th of April, 1861, he wrote an address to the American people, the last verse of which expressed the sentiment of the whole poem and we insert it here:— “Slow to resolve, be swift to do! Teach ye the False how fight the True! How bucklered Perfidy shall feel In her black heart the Patriot’s steel; How sure the bolt that Justice wings; How weak the arm a traitor brings; How mighty they, who steadfast stand For Freedom’s Flag and Freedom’s Land!” But the poem which created the greatest enthusiasm at the time of its publication, and which is still a most touchingly inspiring selection, was written at about the same time as the “Address to the American People,” possibly ten days later, and it was given the title of “Scott and the Veteran.” To fully appreciate the power of those verses, one needs to recall the hesitation, and the excitement, and the uncertainty which the nation felt in that dark hour. In a time like that, a few clear, unmistakable words work wonders with a people. Well does the writer recall the electrical effect of that poem in 1861, when read at a patriotic gathering of the yeomen, in a valley of the Berkshire Hills, in Western Massachusetts. The lines were not so polished, nor the words so choice as many other verses which Mr. Taylor had written; but they seem to come again as they were then recited, and awaken memories of mountain glens, and “mountain boys”; of camps and battles, of fields of cotton made fields of carnage; of loved faces looking skyward, cold and still; of a nation saved, redeemed, renewed. The three closing verses we have never forgotten.