date were clutched and borne as
prizes to the learned man of each group, to be spelled out to the
delectation of open-mouthed listeners. For the whole country had turned
out, with its hands in its breeches pockets, and so far it seemed
content to gape and lounge about the stations. The men, to all
appearance, were ready and eager; but at that time no idea of such a
thing as preparation had entered their minds.

It is difficult, at best, to overcome the _vis inertiae_ of the
lower-class dweller along the South Atlantic seaboard; but when he is
first knocked in the head with so knotty a club as secession, and then
is told to be up and doing, he probably does--nothing. Their leaders
had not been among them yet, and the "Goobers" were entirely at sea.
They knew that something had gone wrong, that something was expected of
them; but how, where or what, their conception was of the vaguest. The
average intelligence of the masses thereabout is not high; the change
noticeable before crossing the Virginia line becoming more and more
marked as one travels straight south. Whether the monotonous stretches
of pine barren depress mentally, or frequent recurring "ager"
prostrates physically, who shall say? But to the casual glance along
that railroad line, was not presented an unvarying picture of bright,
or intellectual, faces.

In Wilmington--not then the busy mart and "port of the Confederacy,"
she later grew to be--almost equal apathy prevailed. There was more
general sense of a crisis upon them; but the escape valve for extra
steam, generated therefrom, seemed to be in talk only. There were
loud-mouthed groups about the hotel, sundry irate and some drunken
politicians at the ferry. But signs of real action were nowhere seen;
and modes of organization seemed to have interested no man one met. The
"Old North State" had stood ready to dissolve her connection with the
Union for some five weeks; but to the looker-on, she seemed no more
ready for the struggle to follow her "ordinance of secession," than if
that step had not been considered.

But it must be remembered that this was the very beginning, when a
whole people were staggered by reaction of their own blow; and all
seemed to stand irresolute on the threshold of a vast change. And when
the tug really came, the state responded so bravely and so readily that
none of her sisters might doubt the mettle she was made of. Her record
is written from Bethel to Appomattox, in letters so