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This speech was surely worth thousands of men to the government, but such is the constitutional cowardice of professional managing politicians that those of that day thought it prudent, for the sake of winning over to loyalty the so-called War Democrats, to have the speech suppressed, and all the docile daily papers did suppress it. It was circulated to the number of a hundred thousand as a supplement extra of the weekly called "The Anglo-African." Even so late as October of that year the Republican State Convention, according to an exultant editorial of the "Boston Daily Advertiser," "certainly disavowed any intention of endorsing the fatal doctrines announced by Mr. Sumner in that convention," and also buried Rev. James Freeman Clarke's resolution in favor of freeing the slaves, as the esteemed contemporary of that day predicted, "never to rise again." By another year the Emancipation proclamation had issued, and three months later Massachusetts idealists speaking through Wendell Phillips could say: "A blundering and corrupt cabinet has made it at last an inevitable necessity,—Liberty or Death. The cowardice of Webster's followers in the cabinet has turned his empty rhetoric into solemn truth; and now honest men are not only at liberty, but bound to live and die under his motto,—'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.'" The country's baffling search to find its ground, its rising determination to yield thus far and no farther, the stand taken at last, the great defeat that first befell, the high idealism, the spirit of the hour,—all are seen in the brief, intimate account written for the family circle at home of the experiences and feelings of one representative Boston youth of twenty, soon after to be a full-fledged three years' man, a hero who rode in the First Massachusetts Cavalry from Virginia to Florida and back again.

"The First Massachusetts Infantry was the first regiment to leave the State for three years' service in the national cause; and, indeed, is said to have been the first three years' regiment in the service of the United States." To the call from the War Department of May 8, 1861, for volunteers for three years, "the First Regiment immediately and unanimously responded," though the other regiments which had gone from the State were enlisted for three months only. The First left Boston on June 15, 1861, and reached Washington on the 18th, and the next day marched, with the temperature at 90°, to a camp beyond Georgetown and was at once put under strictly military discipline, being there in the enemy's country. It was not till July 16 that the regiment marched into Virginia with three other regiments, and the next night bivouacked at Centreville.

The battle of Blackburn's Ford, July 18, in which the Chelsea soldiers fell, was an affair of outposts, resulting from General McDowell's purpose to "feel of the enemy." It was begun by shots from the Rebels posted in the woods bordering Bull Run. Both sides were soon at work with artillery. Companies G and H of the First Regiment had advanced through a gully, or dry ravine, leading into Bull Run, until they found themselves exposed to a murderous fire from three different directions. For at least half an hour they remained in this position unable to advance or retreat. The New York Twelfth on their flank fell back, and a general retrograde movement soon followed, with a stand taken at Centreville. The only valuable result of the reconnoissance was the bringing under fire for the first time of some thousands of raw troops. Thirteen