"
The next letters from my mother spoke of my coming out to them
as soon as the school year should be over. The country was
likely to be disturbed, she said; and it would not suit with
my father's health to come home just now. As soon as the
school year should be over, and Dr. Sandford could find a
proper opportunity for me to make the journey, I should come.
I was very glad; yet I was not all glad. I wished they could
have come to me rather. I was not, I hardly knew why I was
not, quite ready to quit America while these troubles
threatened. And as days went on, and the cloud grew blacker,
my feeling of unwillingness increased. The daily prints were
full of fresh instances of the seizure of United States
property, of the secession of new States; then the Secession
Congress met, and elected Jefferson Davis and Alexander
Stephens their President and Vice President; and rebellion was
duly organised.
Jefferson Davis! How the name took me back to the summer
parade on the West Point plain, and my first view of that
smooth, sinister, ill-conditioned face.
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