“Challenge the vote!” “Challenge the vote!” “No niggers here!” sounded from all sides.

The bit of paper which Ercildoune had placed on the window-ledge fluttered to the ground on the outer side, and, looking at Tom, Robert said quietly, “1860 or 1865?—­is the war ended?”

“No!” answered Tom, taking his arm, and walking away.  “No, my friend! so you and I will continue in the service.”

“Not ended;—­it is true! how and when will it be closed?”

“That is for the loyal people of America to decide,” said Russell, as they turned their faces towards home.

How and when will it be closed? a question asked by the living and the dead,—­to which America must respond.

Among the living is a vast army:  black and white,—­shattered and maimed, and blind:  and these say, “Here we stand, shattered and maimed, that the body politic might be perfect! blind forever, that the glorious sun of liberty might shine abroad throughout the land, for all people, through all coming time.”

And the dead speak too.  From their crowded graves come voices of thrilling and persistent pathos, whispering, “Finish the work that has fallen from our nerveless hands.  Let no weight of tyranny, nor taint of oppression, nor stain of wrong, cumber the soil nor darken the land we died to save.”

NOTE

Since it is impossible for any one memory to carry the entire record of the war, it is well to state, that almost every scene in this book is copied from life, and that the incidents of battle and camp are part of the history of the great contest.

The story of Fort Wagner is one that needs no such emphasis, it is too thoroughly known; that of the Color-Sergeant, whose proper name is W.H.  Carney, is taken from a letter written by General M.S.  Littlefield to Colonel A.G.  Browne, Secretary to Governor Andrew.

From the New York Tribune and the Providence Journal were taken the accounts of the finding of Hunt, the coming of the slaves into a South Carolina camp, and the voluntary carrying, by black men, ere they were enlisted, of a schooner into the fight at Newbern.  Than these two papers, none were considered more reliable and trustworthy in their war record.

Almost every paper in the North published the narrative of the black man pushing off the boat, for which an official report is responsible.  The boat was a flat-boat, with a company of soldiers on board; and the battery under the fire of which it fell was at Rodman’s Point, North Carolina.  In drawing the outlines of this, as of the others, I have necessarily used a somewhat free pencil, but the main incident of each has been faithfully preserved.

The disabled black soldier my own eyes saw thrust from a car in Philadelphia.

The portraits of Ercildoune and his children may seem to some exaggerated; those who have, as I, the rare pleasure of knowing the originals, will say, “the half has not been told.”