people resolute as he
believed his own could not be conquered, especially by a commercial
community--the proverbial "nation of shopkeepers." Napoleon once had
believed the same, to his ruin. Commercial considerations undoubtedly
weigh heavily; but happily sentiment is still stronger than the
dollar. An amusing instance of the pocket influence, however, came to
my knowledge at the moment. Our captain's son received notice of his
appointment as lieutenant of marines, and sailed for home in an
American merchant-brig shortly before the news came of the firing on
Fort Sumter. When I next met him in the United States, he told me that
the brig's captain had been quite warmly Southern in feeling during
the passage; but when they reached home, and found that Confederate
privateers had destroyed some merchant-vessels, he went entirely over.
He had no use for people who would "rob a poor man of his ship and
cargo."

Our orders home, and tidings of the attack on Fort Sumter, came by the
same mail, some time in June. There were then no cables. The revulsion
of feeling was immediate and universal, in that distant community and
foreign land, as it had been two months before in the Northern States.
The doughfaces were set at once, like a flint. The grave and reverend
seigniors, resident merchants, who had checked any belligerent
utterance among us with reproachful regret that an American should be
willing to fight Americans, were converted or silenced. Every voice
but one was hushed, and that voice said, "Fight." I remember a
tempestuous gathering, an evening or two before we sailed, and one
middle-aged invalid's excited but despondent wish that he was five
hundred men. Such ebullitions are common enough in history, for causes
bad or good. They are to be taken at their true worth; not as a
dependable pledge of endurance to the end, but as an awakening, which
differs from that of common times as the blast of the trumpet that
summoned men at midnight for Waterloo differs from the lazy rubbing of
the eyes before thrusting one's neck into the collar of a working day.
The North was roused and united; a result which showed that, wittingly
or unwittingly, the Union leaders had so played the cards in their
hands as to score the first trick.

Our passage home was tedious but uneventful. I remember only the
incident that the flag-officer on one occasion played at old-time
warfare of his youth, by showing to a passing vessel a Spanish flag
ins