Watchfires by Louis Auchincloss

Author:Louis Auchincloss [Auchincloss, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780395315460
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: 1982-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

19

THE RUSH OF EVENTS that followed the election of Lincoln was like a clattering new train on the New York Central tracks. Dexter found himself suddenly alive and awake as he had not been in the moments of greatest ecstasy in South Vesey Street. The secession of South Carolina, the assault on Sumter, the calling up of volunteers, seemed once more to match the public excitement with his own pre-Annie internal commotion. Leaning out the window of Union Square to watch the enlisted soldiers parade past, mingling with the crowds on Broadway that applauded the return of Major Anderson, standing with his father-in-law on the dais in Washington Square while a Tiffany stand of colors was presented to the commanding officers of the Sixteenth Regiment, he felt himself at one with the whole big, shouting, hustling, flag-waving city. The God of Hosts had called forth his troops at last!

Purpose came back into life like a spring flood; direction filled up the summer void. Rosalie, already qualified as a nurse, was kept from rushing to the aid of the still nonexistent wounded only by the more urgent demand for her administrative talents in the organization of the Sanitary Commission. Dexter knew that she would have been embarrassed to admit that war had brought her cheer, but her heightened color and the warmer note in her voice as she hurried to and fro to her meetings betrayed her. Fred and Selby were at last united in patriotic fervor, and the little household in Union Square seemed to glow with a fine new harmony.

Dexter, at excited family gatherings at Number 417, noted Annie's obvious boredom with the national crisis and could not help reflecting that it made her less alluring. There was something petty, almost mean, in such a resolute separation of self from the popular enthusiasm. It made a sorry contrast to Rosalie's emulation of the great gray lady of the Crimean War.

But the most dramatic change of all was in Mr. Handy. No sooner had word come of the first shell fired at Sumter than all his doubts and hesitations had vanished. There was no longer any question about business interests or the market value of peace. In one bound he went further than Joanna or even Rosalie. He would pound his dining room table now and proclaim that the rebel states should no longer have the option of re-entering the Union at the simple price of abandoning the principle of secession. No, sir! They should be readmitted only when their slaves had been emancipated! And for no compensation! They had had their chance for that. Now they would have to fight, not only for their enchained blacks, but for their cotton, for their plantations, for their very lives!

Mr. Handy proceeded, with other prominent men of affairs, to organize the Union Defense Committee of the Citizens of New York, which met and worked, day and night, to provide uniforms and arms for the New York regiments. When Dexter told his father-in-law

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