hey
obviated all danger of this in the way I mention. When these men were
met together, it might be supposed that they presented countenances
marked by savage and ferocious passions, and that atrocity and cruelty
were the-predominating traits in each face. This, however, was not so.
In general they were just as any other number of men brought together
for any purpose might be. Some, to be sure, among them betrayed strong
indications of animal impulse; but taken together, they looked just as
I say. When they were all nearly assembled, one might-naturally imagine
that the usual animated dialogue and discussions, which the cause that
brought them together furnished, would have taken place. This, however,
was not the case. On the contrary, there was something singularly wild,
solemn, and dreadful, in their comparative quietness; for silence we
could not absolutely term it.

There were many reasons for this. In the first place, there existed
an apprehension of the yeomanry and cavalry, who had on more than one
occasion surprised meetings of this description before. 'Tis true
they had sentinels placed--but the sentinels themselves had been made
prisoners of by parties of yeomen and blood-hounds, who had come in
colored clothes, in twos and threes, like the Ribbon men themselves.
There were other motives, however, for the stillness which
prevailed--motives which, when we consider them, invest the whole
proceedings with something that is calculated to fill the mind with
apprehension and fear. Here were men unquestionably assembled for
illegal purposes--for the perpetration of crime--for the shedding
of human blood. But in what light did they view this terrible
determination? Simply as a redress of grievances; as the only means left
them of doing that for themselves which the laws refused to do for them.
They keenly and bitterly felt the scourge of the oppressor, who,
under the sanction, and in the name of those laws which ought to
have protected them, left scarcely anything undone to drive them
to desperation; and now finding that the law existed only for their
punishment, they resolved to legislate for themselves, and retaliate
on their oppressor. There is an awful lesson in all this; for it is
certainly a frightful thing to see law and justice so partially and
iniquitously administered as to disorganize society, and to make men
look upon murder as an act of justice, and the shedding of blood as a
moral triumph, if not a mora