This Feeling Of Course Produced Coercion, And The Movement Was In That Way Tyrannical.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people. During the period of enlistment this tyranny was very strong.

But the existence of such a tyranny proves the passion and patriotism of the people. It got the better of the love of money, of the love of children, and of the love of progress. Wives who with their bairns were absolutely dependent on their husbands' labors, would wish their husbands to be at the war. Not to conduce, in some special way, toward the war; to have neither father there, nor brother nor son; not to have lectured, or preached, or written for the war; to have made no sacrifice for the war, to have had no special and individual interest in the war, was disgraceful. One sees at a glance the tyranny of all this in such a country as the States. One can understand how quickly adverse stories would spread themselves as to the opinion of any man who chose to remain tranquil at such a time. One shudders at the absolute absence of true liberty which such a passion throughout a democratic country must engender. But he who has observed all this must acknowledge that that passion did exist. Dollars, children, progress, education, and political rivalry all gave way to the one strong national desire for the thrashing and crushing of those who had rebelled against the authority of the stars and stripes.

When we were at Dixon they were getting up the Dement regiment. The attempt at the time did not seem to be prosperous, and the few men who had been collected had about them a forlorn, ill- conditioned look. But then, as I was told, Dixon had already been decimated and redecimated by former recruiting colonels. Colonel Dement, from whom the regiment was to be named, and whose military career was only now about to commence, had come late into the field. I did not afterward ascertain what had been his success, but I hardly doubt that he did ultimately scrape together his thousand men. "Why don't you go?" I said to a burly Irishman who was driving me. "I'm not a sound man, yer honor," said the Irishman; "I'm deficient in me liver." Taking the Irishmen, however, throughout the Union, they had not been found deficient in any of the necessaries for a career of war. I do not think that any men have done better than the Irish in the American army.

From Dixon we went to Chicago. Chicago is in many respects the most remarkable city among all the remarkable cities of the Union. Its growth has been the fastest and its success the most assured. Twenty-five years ago there was no Chicago, and now it contains 120,000 inhabitants. Cincinnati, on the Ohio, and St. Louis, at the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi, are larger towns; but they have not grown large so quickly nor do they now promise so excessive a development of commerce.

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