The next morning came the President’s proclamation.  Winthrop went immediately to town and enrolled himself in the artillery corps of the Seventh Regiment.  During the two or three following days he was very busy and very happy.  On Friday afternoon, the 19th of April, I stood at the corner of Courtland Street and saw the regiment as it marched away.  Two days before, I had seen the Massachusetts troops going down the same street.  During the day the news had come that they were already engaged, that some were already dead in Baltimore.  And the Seventh, as they went, blessed and wept over by a great city, went, as we all believed, to terrible battle.  The setting sun in a clear April sky shone full up the street.  Mothers’ eyes glistened at the windows upon the glistening bayonets of their boys below.  I knew that Winthrop and other dear friends were there, but I did not see them.  I saw only a thousand men marching like one hero.  The music beat and rang and clashed in the air.  Marching to death or victory or defeat, it mattered not.  They marched for Justice, and God was their captain.

From that moment he has told his own story in these pages until he went to Fortress Monroe, and was made acting military secretary and aid by General Butler.  Before he went, he wrote the most copious and gayest letters from the camp.  He was thoroughly aroused, and all his powers happily at play.  In a letter to me soon after his arrival in Washington, he says,—­

“I see no present end of this business.  We must conquer the South.  Afterward we must be prepared to do its police in its own behalf, and in behalf of its black population, whom this war must, without precipitation, emancipate.  We must hold the South as the metropolitan police holds New York.  All this is inevitable.  Now I wish to enroll myself at once in the Police of the Nation, and for life, if the nation will take me.  I do not see that I can put myself—­experience and character--to any more useful use.....  My experience in this short campaign with the Seventh assures me that volunteers are for one purpose and regular soldiers entirely another.  We want regular soldiers for the cause of order in these anarchical countries, and we want men in command who, though they may be valuable as temporary satraps or proconsuls to make liberty possible where it is now impossible, will never under any circumstances be disloyal to Liberty, will always oppose any scheme of any one to constitute a military government, and will be ready, when the time comes, to imitate Washington.  We must think of these things, and prepare for them.....  Love to all the dear friends.....  This trip has been all a lark to an old tramper like myself.”

Later he writes,—­