On the 27th, the Tribune contained the following editorial words:  “Now is the hour.  Pennsylvania is at length arousing, we trust not too late.  We plead with the entire North to rush to the rescue; the whole North is menaced through this invasion.  It we do not stop it at the Susquehanna, it will soon strike us on the Delaware, then on the Hudson.”

“My chance is coming,” Merwyn muttered, grimly, as he read these words.  “If the answering counter-revolution does not begin during the next few days, I shall take my rifle and fight as a citizen as long as there is a rebel left on Northern soil.”

The eyes of others were turned towards Pennsylvania; he scanned the city in which he dwelt.  He had abandoned all morbid brooding, and sought by every means in his power to inform himself in regard to the seething, disloyal elements that were now manifesting themselves.  From what Mr. Vosburgh had told him, and from what he had discovered himself, he felt that any hour might witness bloody co-operation at his very door with the army of invasion.

“Should this take place,” he exclaimed, as he paced his room, “oh that it might be my privilege, before I died, to perform some deed that would convince Marian Vosburgh that I am not what she thinks me to be!”

Each new day brought its portentous news.  On the 30th of June, there were accounts of intense excitement at Washington and Baltimore, for the enemy had appeared almost at the suburbs of these cities.  In Baltimore, women rushed into the streets and besought protection.  New York throbbed and rocked with kindred excitement.

On July 3d, the loyal Tribune again sounded the note of deep alarm:  “These are times that try men’s souls!  The peril of our country’s overthrow is great and imminent.  The triumph of the rebels distinctly and unmistakably involves the downfall of republican and representative institutions.”

By a strange anomaly multitudes of the poor, the oppressed in other lands, whose hope for the future was bound up in the cause of the North, were arrayed against it.  Their ignorance made them dupes and tools, and enemies of human rights and progress were prompt to use them.  On the evening of this momentous 3d of July, a manifesto, in the form of a handbill, was extensively circulated throughout the city.  Jeff Davis himself could not have written anything more disloyal, more false, of the Union government and its aims, or better calculated to incite bloody revolution in the North.

For the last few days the spirit of rebellion had been burning like a fuse toward a vast magazine of human passion and intense hatred of Northern measures and principles.  If from Pennsylvania had come in electric flash the words, “Meade defeated,” the explosion would have come almost instantly; but all now had learned that the army of the Potomac had emerged from its obscurity, and had grappled with the invading forces.  Even the most reckless of the so-called peace faction could afford to wait a few hours longer.  As soon as the shattered columns of Meade’s army were in full retreat, the Northern wing of the rebellion could act with confidence.