Out of a quiet and happy life in Normandy I was aroused by the complications of our Civil War.  An intimate friend living in Paris, the late Colonel W.B.  Greene, a graduate of West Point, had applied for the command of a regiment of Massachusetts troops, and offered me a position on his staff if he got it and I would come.  We agreed to go together, but his impatience carried him away, and he sailed without giving me notice.  I followed by the next steamer, and, leaving my wife with my parents, I went on to Washington and to Greene’s headquarters.  I was too late for Greene, and I could not pass the medical examination, which was then very rigid, for all the North was volunteering.  “Go home,” said Greene; “we have already buried all the men like you.  We have not seen the enemy yet, and we have buried six per cent. of the regiment.  It is no place for you.”  But I had no choice; there were 800,000 men enlisted, and further enlistments were countermanded.  I tried to get some position with Burnside,—­who was fitting out an expedition to North Carolina,—­even as cook; for I could not pass for the rank and file, and Burnside, as a friend of my friends in Rhode Island, might, I thought, help me.  He replied that he had already nine applications for every post at his disposal.  As a last resource, I went up into the Adirondacks to raise a company of sharpshooters.  My backwoodsmen were all ready to go, but they wanted special rifles and special organization, for they meant to go to “shoot secesh,” not to be regular infantry.  Their ambition was not reconcilable with the plans of the military authorities, so that the company was never raised, and I then turned to my plan for the consulate.

I suppose that there are few now living who knew by personal investigation and remember clearly the condition of the country at that epoch.  We had suffered the defeat of Bull Run, and the country at large was in a state of flaming patriotism; but sober people had many doubts whether the government was strong enough to carry through the plans of the President, and he also had, I was told by some one who knew him, been very uncertain whether the population at large would respond, even when he made the first call for 75,000 volunteers.  Persons in positions of great influence were of the opinion that the North had no right to coerce the South.  General Scott, the commander-in-chief, urged separation peacefully, and Horace Greeley, the most influential member of the press in the country, opposed coercion, while the mass of the Democratic party were either on the fence or openly in favor of the South, and this opposition of the Democrats was probably what gave Lincoln the most serious consideration.  Some of the most earnest and patriotic people I knew had grave doubts if the Northern people had any conception of the work they had undertaken, and if they would be constant when they came to realize it.