PENCIL SKETCH MADE IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

A. Pryor appears prominently in the foreground, though Nast did not then know whose was the striking face of that excitable advocate of the Southern Cause.

In his later life Nast remembered much of this Washington experience with that feeling of shuddering horror with which we recall a disordered dream. The atmosphere was charged with foreboding. Even the busy days about the Willard Hotel were strewn with ominous incidents.

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"I am from Maryland, and stand by my colors!" Nast heard a man mutter at his elbow, one evening in the hotel lobby, where Horace Greeley and others of the Abolition faith were gathered. "I am from Virginia and stand by you!" was the muttered answer of another bystander.

Somewhat later a crowd of Southerners, with John Morrissey, surrounded Horace Greeley and a group of his friends, and expressed their sentiments with an emphasis doubtless augmented by liquor.

For it was not a time of loud talking. Knots of men on the street corners conversed in whispers. At night the streets were hushed and almost deserted.

The day of inauguration was one of gloom and mutterings. Military was carefully posted to prevent hostile demonstrations,

The weather was bleak. With his cane laid across the manuscript to keep the sheets from flying away,* the President-elect, pale and anxious, read that memorable address in which he said, "We are not enemies, but friends."

There was not much applause. The city drew a great breath of relief when it was over and there had been no outbreak. Yet the tension was not relaxed. The men who had sworn that Abraham Lincoln should never take his seat were not gone. Night came down, brooding danger.

"It seemed to me," said Nast, "that the shadow of death was everywhere. I had endless visions of black funereal parades, accompanied by mournful music. It was as if the whole city were mined, and I know now that this was figuratively true. A single yell of defiance would have inflamed a mob. A shot would have started a conflict. In my room at the Willard Hotel I was trying to work. I

picked up my pencils and laid them

down as many as a dozen times. I got up at last and walked the floor. Presently in the rooms next mine

other men were walking. I could hear them in the silence. My head

HIS MIND

was beginning to throb, and I sat down and pressed my hands. to my temples.

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Then, all at once, in the Ebbett House across the way a window was flung up and a man stepped out on the balcony. The

"The National Capital," by George C. Hazleton, Jr.

OFFICE SEEKERS IN THE LOBBY OF THE WILLARD
(From the original drawing)

footsteps about me ceased. Everybody had heard the man and was watching breathlessly to see what he would do. Suddenly, in a rich, powerful voice, he began to sing The Star Spangled Banner.'

6

"The result was extraordinary. Windows were thrown up. Crowds gathered on the streets. A multitude of voices joined the song. When it was over the street rang with cheers. The men in the rooms next mine joined me in the corridors. The hotel came to life. Guests wept and flung their arms about one another. Dissension and threat were silenced. It seemed to me, and I believe to all of us, that Washington had been saved by the inspiration of an unknown man with a voice to sing that grand old song of songs."

CHAPTER XII

for

A ZOUAVE

THE DAYS OF CONFLICT

And now came the long, fierce struggle. The Nation was in a state of war before it was willing to admit the fact. Union stores and armament had been seized. State after State had seceded. As far back as January 9 (1861) the "Star of the West," a merchant vessel sent with supplies and reinforcements to relieve Fort Sumter, had been fired upon by the guns of Fort Moultrie and compelled to return with her cargo to New York. This had caused great rejoicing in the South, where secession was eager for the trial of arms, but it was not until the bombardment of Sumter on the 13th of April that the North really awoke to the ghastly fact of a civil war, the end of which no man could foresee.

Then, suddenly, the lines became sharply drawn. Men were either for or against the Union. Hundreds of merchants who had favored peace at almost any national sacrifice now came forward with funds and offers of service. Even Fernando Wood became vice-president of the first great war meeting in New York City, and delivered an address full of patriotism, urging his hearers to unite in the common cause of Union. President Lincoln issued a call for volunteers, and they came pouring in.

Drilling and arming were everywhere. The clamor of fife and drum was on the wind. The North was aroused at last.

The news of the assault on the Sixth Massachusetts by the roughs of Baltimore came on April 19th, on the day that the

THE MARCH OF THE SEVENTH REGIMENT DOWN BROADWAY, APRIL 19, 1861

Seventh of New York-the crack regiment of the New York National Guard-marched down Broadway to the ferry for departure. The city went fairly mad that day. Old and young screamed themselves hoarse, and a million banners waved above the line of march. Nast made a drawing and, years later, a large oil painting of the scene. It hangs to-day in the armory of the Seventh, the only pictorial record of an event which New York will never forget.

But marching regiments and a cheering populace are not always the prelude of victory. The months following Abraham Lincoln's accession were full of dark days for the Union. The war was almost a succession of defeats for the National forces,