and that Jeff Davis and his cabinet would be prisoners, or fugitives.
But the battle of Bull Run, fought on July 21, 1861, gave the loyal
people of the Nation a terrible awakening. The result of this battle was
a crushing disappointment and a bitter mortification to all the friends
of the Union. They realized then that a long and bloody struggle was
before them. But Bull Run was probably all for the best. Had it been a
Union victory, and the Rebellion then been crushed, negro slavery would
have been retained, and the "irrepressible conflict" would have been
fought out likely in your time, with doubtless tenfold the loss of life
and limb that ensued in the war of the sixties.

The day after the battle of Bull Run Congress passed a law authorizing
Mr. Lincoln to call for five hundred thousand three-years volunteers. It
was under this law, supplemented by authority from the Secretary of War,
that the regiment was organized in which I subsequently enlisted. I was
then only a boy, but somehow I felt that the war was going to be a long
one, and that it was the duty of every young fellow of the requisite
physical ability to "go for a soldier," and help save the Nation. I had
some talk with my father on the subject. He was a strong Union man, and
in sympathy with my feelings, but I could see that naturally he dreaded
the idea of his boy going to the war, with the result that maybe he
would be killed, or come home a cripple for life. But I gave him to
understand that when they began organizing a regiment in our vicinity,
and which would contain a fair proportion of my neighbor boys and
acquaintances, I intended then to volunteer. It was simply intolerable
to think that I could stay at home, among the girls, and be pointed at
by the soldier boys as a stay-at-home coward.

The work of organizing and recruiting for a regiment in our corner of
the State began early in the autumn of 1861. The various counties in
that immediate locality were overwhelmingly Democratic in politics, and
many of the people were strong "Southern sympathizers," as they were
then called, and who later developed into virulent Copperheads and
Knights of the Golden Circle. Probably 90 per cent of the inhabitants of
Greene, Jersey, Scott, Morgan, and adjoining counties came from the
Southern States, or were the direct descendants of people from that part
of the country. Kentuckians, Tennesseeans, and North and South
Carolinians were especially numerous. But it i