ive as a reason that "if
it should be taken before, he would be obliged to write his oration all
over again"--had been assaulted for the offensive expression, and only
escaped after a hard fight, with a black eye and a sense of damaged
personal dignity. It had been settled that Richmond was to be in
possession of the Union troops on the Fourth--wo to him who doubted it!

Hark! was there muttering thunder in the heavens?--thunder from a sky
hitherto all bright blue? Business men, going down town on the morning
of the twenty-eighth of June, found that "fighting had commenced before
Richmond," and that "McClellan was changing his front." That "change of
front" looked ominous. A few read the secret at once--that heavy
reinforcements had come into Richmond from the half-disbanded rebel army
Halleck had checked but not defeated at Corinth; and coupled with
strange rumors of this came hints about "Stonewall Jackson," which
indicated to the same persons that that rebel officer had advanced from
the North-west and made an attempt to take McClellan's right wing in
flank, necessitating a retrograde movement of that wing to bring him in
front. Still, confidence was not lost, in McClellan or in the army.
While his right wing fell back before an attack in force, his left might
swing in towards Richmond and even take the city--who could say?

Then the telegraph closed down, and the morning papers contained "no
later intelligence" from the field before Richmond. This was "the
feather that broke the camel's back" of the national spirit. The
government had no confidence in the people--it dared not trust them with
the truth--it dared conceal! Our army was being cut to pieces, and we
were permitted to know nothing of the calamity except the dreadful fact.
No development could have been so injurious as this concealment--no
stroke at the national confidence so deadly as the want of reliance
shown by the government censors. The nation's heart went down beneath
the blow: to this day[6] it has never risen to the same proud and
courageous determination shown through all previous disasters.

[Footnote 6: January, 1863.]

It is said to be a terrible spectacle when a strong man weeps--a
thousand times more terrible than the grief of the softer sex and the
gentler nature, because it is evident what must have been the blow
inflicted and what the struggle before the pent waters burst forth. But
even the strong man's grief is tame compared to the sp