"We know no divided allegiance-we will allow of "no divided country.

“Traitors in arms are setting in defiance the autho"rity of your Government. Teach them that this is setting at defiance the power of the people.

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"The Freemen of the North will now put into the "field an army large enough to command a peace.

"Let the men of Boston do their full share in this "needed work.

"You have the power-wield it! You possess the 66 resources-use them!

*

"Come with your arms strong and with your hearts "full, with the steady tread of men who know that "the cause which leads them is a holy one.

"With justice, and truth, and honour, and a pure patriotism, and God the unfailing fountain of them "all, on your side, you cannot fail unless you fold your "hands in a listless apathy, and look with a vacant gaze upon this diabolical attempt to overthrow this fabric "of self-government.

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"It cannot be that the flag, whose stars and stripes "have been sufficient to protect us throughout the "civilized world, is to be trodden on and desecrated by "traitors.

"It is not the question, whether the number of men "needed for the complete defence of the Government, "and the utter annihilation of this wicked and unpro

"voked rebellion, shall go in the battle-field with arms "in their hands, and with a complete determination to uphold the Government in their hearts.

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"For if the stalwart young men of this community "do not come forward in their strength, their fathers "will in their weakness.

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"Fathers and mothers! Do not withhold your sons "from the conflict in such a cause, though their blood may be dearer to you than your own, and though you "would willingly offer to them your own hearts as "shields against danger.

"Their interests and their honour are alike involved.

"Let it never be said that the young men of the "North preferred ease at home, when the Ark of their "liberties was in danger, to the glory of a manly resist

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ance against traitors for its preservation.

"Send them forth, for the cause is worth any "sacrifice.

“If you have a dozen sons, bring them now to the "service of their country.

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"If they return from a won battle-field, the laurels on their brows will keep their old age green, and scars will be their ornaments. And if they fall in "this righteous cause, they will be buried in the hearts "of their countrymen."

In the whole of this proclamation, no allusion whatever was made to the question of Slavery, and this omission was common in all the proceedings of this period.

An immediate accession of recruits ought to have been the answer made to these appeals; but, somehow or other, the levy did not correspond to the expectations of the nation. There were many causes which were hostile to its progress. Taking in the three months' volunteers, probably near a million of men had been, at one time or other, in the service of the Federal armies since the war began. Now, as the population of the Northern States is about twenty-four millions, and the average life of a generation in America is certainly not over thirty years, there would only be about four millions of men above twenty. One in four of the military population of a country constitutes an enormous proportion. All, and more than all, the men who would have gone naturally to the war had gone already, and the vast majority of the July levy had to be drawn from classes to whom volunteering was a heavy personal sacrifice.

There was no general distress, too, to force the poorer classes into the army for subsistence. The price of living had risen since the war, but wages, owing to the scarcity of labour, had risen in a higher ratio. The call for troops was made under the most dispiriting circumstances. It came on the day after a disaster, at a time when there was little prospect of immediate action, and when the war seemed likely to be prolonged indefinitely.

The harvest was close at hand, and the sons of the

Northern farmers and yeomen, who formed so large a part of the Federal army, could hardly enlist till the crops were got in. The Irish, too, were hanging back. Amongst them, the prejudice against the negro is stronger than amongst any other class, and they believed that the effect of emancipation would be to flood the Northern States with free negroes, and thus lower their own wages. The power of the Irish element, both in the Government and in the army of the North, has been immensely exaggerated abroad; but still it is an element of considerable importance, and, such as it is, it was undoubtedly alienated by the Abolitionist character towards which the war was obviously drifting. There was a prevalent idea, too, that conscription would be resorted to, and that, in this event, the price for substitutes would be much higher than any other bounty yet offered. All these causes were more or less local and temporary in their character; but there was one cause which retarded enlistment more widely and more seriously than all of them put together, and that was, the want of public confidence in the generalship of the Federal commanders, and still more in the administration of the war. There was a general and growing conviction, that the temporising policy of the Government had failed. Slavery, the nation was beginning to see, was a fact that must be looked boldly in the face. The time had come for the Government to declare openly what it meant to

do, and what it meant not to do, with reference to the negro. The absence of any outspoken profession of faith on this subject paralysed the enthusiasm of the people. Could Mr. Lincoln have been induced to issue his Emancipation edict at this period, the result, I believe, might have been far different; but, while the President vacillated between conflicting counsels, the golden opportunity was allowed to pass.

Before I leave the subject of the Levy, let me mention one or two incidents out of many connected with it which came under my own notice. In the City Hall Park there were two sheds, hastily run up. One was the enlistment office, the other the temporary hospital for wounded soldiers just landed from the peninsula. Alongside of the recruiting sergeant one saw the convalescent soldiers-wounded, haggard, and maimed— tottering about beneath the trees. The arrangement, perhaps, was not a politic one. Flags and drinkingbooths and bands of music might attract recruits more readily; yet, to my mind, there was an air of resolution and stern purpose, given by the contrast of the wounded veteran and the raw recruit, which was not without promise. So, again, I spoke in a former chapter, of a house I knew of, where there hung the pictures of three bright, gallant-looking lads, who had gone to the war, one of them never to return. I was there a few days after the battle of the Chickahominy; and the second of these portraits was now a remembrance of one who