Well, he and I were together alone again in the
Council Chamber. Said he, 'You remember when I wanted you to go on to
Washington?' I said, 'Yes, I remember it very well.'--'Well,' said he,
'I didn't know exactly what I wanted you to go for then. Now I will tell
you what let's do; you sing "Coronation," and I'll join with you.' So we
sang together the old tune, and also "Praise God from whom all blessings
flow." Then I sang "Old John Brown," he marching around the room and
joining in the chorus after each verse."
After the war had begun, Governor Andrew insisted on every measure to
defeat the Confederate armies that was consistent with the laws of war.
He was especially strenuous in demanding the emancipation of the slaves,
as the following quotation from a sketch by Mr. Albert G. Browne, Jr.,
the Governor's military secretary, will show:--
"Over the bodies of our soldiers who were killed at Baltimore he had
recorded a prayer that he might live to see the end of the war, and a
vow that, so long as he should govern Massachusetts, and so far as
Massachusetts could control the issue, it should not end without freeing
every slave in America. He believed, at the first, in the policy of
emancipation as a war measure. Finding that timid counsels controlled
the government at Washington, and the then commander of the Army of the
Potomac, so that there was no light in that quarter, he hailed the
action of Fremont in Missouri in proclaiming freedom to the Western
slaves.
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