The Union men of Richmond
who have hungered in Castle Thunder, and been driven, needy and naked,
from the South, were all old line Whigs, distrusting the North, but
disliking Democracy. However, the war burst at last, heralded by that
mysterious lunatic who appeared like a warning giant in the twilight day
of the Union,--old John Brown; and as the Gulf States wheeled into line
and pulled down the old colors, the Old Dominion, Southern and
slaveholding, was too impulsive not to follow the whirlwind. She did not
go for policy's sake, nor for principle's sake, but for emotion's sake.
How wild and jubilant, and confident, were those Richmond mass meetings,
at which separation was counselled! How awful seems their levity at this
distance, with the city conquered and in ruins! On the Capitol Hill the
mad orators inveighed; within the Capitol met the disunion assembly in
secret and prolonged session; before the American, the Exchange, and the
Spottswood hotels, visiting commissioners harangued the crowd; the
people went to ballot on the day of State suicide, with laughing and
wagging, and at the decree that Virginia and her people had resolved to
quit the fabric of their fathers, bonfires and illuminations lit up the
river and the sky.

Done, these were the men to stand fast. Done in dream, the first acts
were mirages rather than comprehensible events. They marched upon
Harper's Ferry; they suppressed the Unionists in their midst; they
erased the sacred mottoes of amity and unity from their monuments, and
won to the new cause they so blindly embraced every inch of their soil
except Old Point, where Fortress Monroe still stood defiant, to be in
the end the source of their downfall. Gayly went the populace of
Richmond, and splendid parties made the nights lustrous. When they heard
that their town was mentioned, among many others, as the probable
Confederate capital, they threw their hearts into the suggestion and
offered lands and edifices as free gifts for the honor of being the
centre of the South. A few, more interested, beheld in the coming of the
seat of government higher rents and increased patronage, crowded hotels,
and railway stock at a premium; but the mass, with the enthusiasm of
women or children, thought only of their beloved city growing in rank
and power; the home of legislators, orators, and savans; the seat of all
rank and the depository of archives. At last the good news came;
Richmond was the capital of a gre