'I believe this infernal rebellion can be, ought to be, and will be subdued. The land may be left a howling waste, desolated by the bloody footsteps of war, from Delaware bay to the gulf, but our territory shall remain unmutilated—the country shall be one, and it shall be free in all its broad boundaries, from Maine to the gulf, and from ocean to ocean.

'In any event, may we be able to act a worthy part in the trying scenes through which we are passing; and should the star of our destiny sink to rise no more, may we feel for ourselves and may history preserve our record clear before heaven and earth, and hand down the testimony to our children, that we have done all, perilled and endured all, to perpetuate the priceless heritage of Liberty and Union, unimpaired to our posterity.'

And in this fervid utterance of our warm-hearted Governor, the free choice of a free people, let us consider Illinois as expressing her honest sentiments.

A WINTER IN CAMP

I was painfully infusing my own 'small Latin and less Greek' into the young Shakspeares of a Western college, when the appointment of a friend to the command of the –th Iowa regiment opened to me a place upon his staff. Three days afterward, in one of the rough board-shanties of Camp McClellan, I was making preparations for my first dress parade. The less said of the dress of that parade, the better. There was no lack of comfortable clothing, but every man had evidently worn the suit he was most willing to throw away when his Uncle Samuel presented him with a new one; and a regiment of such suits drawn up in line, made but a sorry figure in comparison with the smartly uniformed –th, which had just left the ground. Their colonel, in the first glory of his sword and shoulder straps, was replaced by a very rough-looking individual, with a shabby slouched hat pushed far back on his head, and a rusty overcoat, open just far enough to show the place where a cravat might have been. It was very plain, as he stood there with his arms folded, thin lips compressed, and gray eyes hardly visible under their shaggy brows, that whether he looked the colonel or not was the last thought likely to trouble him. I fancied that he did, in spite of all, and that he saw a great deal of good stuff in the party-colored rows before him, which he would know how to use when the right moment came: subsequent events proved that I was not mistaken. The regiment had no reason to be ashamed of their rough colonel, even when the two hundred that were left of them laid down their arms late in the afternoon of that bloody Sabbath at Shiloh, on the very spot where the swelling tide of rebels had beaten upon them like a rock all day long.

But these after achievements are no part of my present story. The more striking passages of this great war for freedom will be well and fully told. Victories like Donelson, death-struggles like that on the plains of Shiloh, will take their place in ample proportions on the page of history. As years roll on they will stand out in strong relief, and be the mountain tops which receding posterity will still recognize when all the rest has sunk beneath the horizon. It were well that some record should also be made of the long and dull days and weeks and months that intervened between these stirring incidents: at least that enough should be told of them to remind our children that they existed, and in this as in all other wars, made up the great bulk of its toils. This indeed seems the hardest lesson for every one but soldiers to learn. Few but those who have had actual experience know how small a part fighting plays in war; how little of the soldier's hardships and privations, how little of his dangers even are met upon the battle field. Tame as stories of barrack life must seem when we are thrilling with the great events for which that life furnishes the substratum, it is worth our while, for the sake of this lesson, to give them also their page upon the record, to spread these neutral tints in due proportion upon the broad canvas. It is partly for this reason that I turn back to sketch the trivial and monotonous scenes of a winter in barracks. It is well to remind you, dear young friends, feminine and otherwise, at home, that a great many days and nights of patient labor go to one brilliant battle. When your loudest huzzas and your sweetest smiles are showered on the lucky ones who have achieved great deeds and walked through the red baptism of fire, remember also how much true courage and fortitude have been shown in bearing the daily hardships of the camp, without the excitement of hand-to-hand conflict.

The new uniforms came at last, and all the slang epithets with which our regiment had been received were duly transferred to the newly arrived squads of the next in order. Then we began to speculate on the time and mode of our departure. It was remarkable how keenly the most contented dispositions entered into these questions. There is in military life a monotony of routine, and at the same time a constant mental excitement, that make change—change of some sort, even from better to worse—almost a necessity. I had already stretched myself in my bunk one evening, and was half asleep, when I heard joyful voices cry out, 'That's good!' and unerring instinct told me that orders had come for the –th to move. On the third day again we stood in our ranks upon the muddy esplanade of the Benton Barracks, patiently waiting for the A. A. A. G. and the P. Q. M. to get through the voluminous correspondence which was to result in quarters and rations. At least twenty thousand men were crowded at that time into this dismal quadrangle. Perseverance and patience could overcome the prevalent impression at the commissary that every new regiment was a set of unlawful intruders, to be starved out if possible, but could not conquer the difficulty of crowding material bodies into less space than they had been created to fill. Two companies had to be packed into each department intended for one. As for 'field and staff,' they were worse off than the privates, and took their first useful lesson in the fact that they were by no means such distinguished individuals in the large army as they had been when showing off their new uniforms at home. It must have been comforting to over-sensitive privates to hear how colonels and quartermasters were snubbed in their turn by the 'general staff.' The regimental headquarters, where these crest-fallen dignitaries should have laid their weary heads, were tenanted by Captains A., who had a pretty wife with him, and B., who gave such nice little suppers, and C., whose mother was first cousin to the ugly half-breed that blew the general's trumpet from the roof of the great house in the centre. Wherefore the colonel, the surgeon, the chaplain, the quartermaster, and the 'subscriber' were content to spread their blankets for the first night with a brace of captains, on the particularly dirty floor of Company F., and dream those 'soldier dreams' in which Mrs. Soldier and two or three little soldiers—assorted sizes—run down to the garden gate to welcome the hero home again, while guardian angels clap their wings in delight and take a receipt for him as 'delivered in good order and well-conditioned' to the deities that preside over the domestic altar.

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