Fort Sumter has been on fire. Anderson has not yet silenced any of our guns. So the aides, still with swords and red sashes by way of uniform, tell us. But the sound of those guns makes regular meals impossible. None of us go to table.
Tea trays pervade the corridors going everywhere.
Some of the anxious hearts lie on their beds and moan in solitary misery. Even after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the gravity of the revolt, and the power and will of the slave States for a strong and continued military resistance to national authority, were not at all realized at the North, except by a few. It was not thought it would be joined in by Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia. Mary Livermore was staying in Boston with her father when the American Civil War started in 1861. My own home had been in Chicago for years, but my aged father was thought to be dying, and the stern speech of the telegram had summoned me to his bedside.