October 16. I rode to the farthest outpost of the army at Lewinsville, where we found a captain and twenty men. About two rifle-shots from us was a wood where the enemy’s pickets were placed. On our right we could see ten or twenty men approaching the wood. The captain informed us that they were...

May 14. Mr. Appleton reached home, and left for Washington to take his seat in the extra session of Congress called for July fourth. Lord John Russell and the English sympathize with the South and talk of treating their pirates as belligerents, etc. The English have always been guided by their...

April 19. The Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, which came from Lowell and Lawrence, was fired upon and stoned by the mob in Baltimore. The last company appears to have been the only one attacked; the report is that they had two men killed and some wounded, and shot down some ten of the assailants....

April 15. President Lincoln called out seventy-five thousand militia to suppress the rebellion, defend the capital, and retake the forts, mints, etc., seized by the insurgents. Two thousand men have been called from Massachusetts. Immense enthusiasm here to defend the flag and the Government. The...

February 18. Jefferson Davis has been chosen President and Stephens Vice-President of the Confederacy. In the meantime Lincoln, having been duly recognized as President on Ash Wednesday, the thirteenth, has left Springfield for Washington. He seems to talk everywhere to everybody.

December 30. Major Anderson has evacuated Fort Moultrie and retired to Fort Sumter. The palmetto flag floats over the Charleston Custom House. In short, they are in open rebellion. The President’s (Buchanan) message took the ground that every State might secede, as there was no law to prevent it,...

December 23. South Carolina seceded on Friday, the twentieth, from the United States. The day, I am afraid, will be long remembered. Mr. William Amory, who returned from Washington yesterday, says that the Republicans will make no concessions and he thinks, as I do, that if that is the case the...

November 6. Election day. Lincoln and Hamlin were chosen. Every Republican member of Congress from Massachusetts has been elected except Burlingame, who was defeated to my great joy by Mr. William Appleton. I had worked so hard that I was attacked by fever and violent cold, brought on by...

1863 General McClellan passed some days in the beginning of February in Boston. He was most enthusiastically received by the people. There was a monster reception at the Tremont House of fifteen thousand people. He received a silver pitcher from the children and a sword from the Citizens’...

October 12. Left for Washington with Mr. Bartlett, William Amory, and Fred d’Hauteville. In New York called on General Burnside with Mr. Amory. He struck me as a very handsome, kind-looking man with the nostril of a race-horse,—what you call a fine fellow. At Washington, where we found Willard’s...