in the coming work. Returning home with me, he
sat until late in the evening talking with an unwonted spirit, saying
playfully, I remember, that, if his friends would only give him a horse,
he would ride straight to victory.

Especially he wished that some competent person would keep a careful
record of events as they passed; "for we are making our history," he
said, "hand over hand." He sat quietly in the great chair while he
spoke, and at last rose to go. We went together to the door, and stood
for a little while upon the piazza, where we had sat peacefully through
so many golden summer-hours. The last hour for us had come, but we did
not know it. We shook hands, and he left me, passing rapidly along the
brook-side under the trees, and so in the soft spring starlight vanished
from my sight forever.

The next morning came the President's proclamation. Winthrop went
immediately to town and enrolled himself in the artillery corps of the
Seventh Regiment. During the two or three following days he was very
busy and very happy. On Friday afternoon, the 19th of April, I stood at
the corner of Courtland Street and saw the regiment as it marched away.
Two days before, I had seen the Massachusetts troops going down the same
street. During the day the news had come that they were already engaged,
that some were already dead in Baltimore. And the Seventh, as they went,
blessed and wept over by a great city, went, as we all believed, to
terrible battle. The setting sun in a clear April sky shone full up
the street. Mothers' eyes glistened at the windows upon the glistening
bayonets of their boys below. I knew that Winthrop and other dear
friends were there, but I did not see them. I saw only a thousand men
marching like one hero. The music beat and rang and clashed in the air.
Marching to death or victory or defeat, it mattered not. They marched
for Justice, and God was their captain.

From that moment he has told his own story in these pages until he went
to Fortress Monroe, and was made acting military secretary and aid by
General Butler. Before he went, he wrote the most copious and gayest
letters from the camp. He was thoroughly aroused, and all his powers
happily at play. In a letter to me soon after his arrival in Washington,
he says,--

"I see no present end of this business. We must conquer the South.
Afterward we must be prepared to do its police in its own behalf, and
in behalf of its black population, whom this war