To sum up the foregoing from the outset (and, of course, far, far more
unrecorded,) I estimate three leading sources and formative stamps to
my own character, now solidified for good or bad, and its subsequent
literary and other outgrowth--the maternal nativity-stock brought
hither from far-away Netherlands, for one, (doubtless the best)--the
subterranean tenacity and central bony structure (obstinacy, wilfulness)
which I get from my paternal English elements, for another--and the
combination of my Long Island birth-spot, sea-shores, childhood's
scenes, absorptions, with teeming Brooklyn and New York--with, I
suppose, my experiences afterward in the secession outbreak, for the
third.
For, in 1862, startled by news that my brother George, an officer in
the 51st New York volunteers, had been seriously wounded (first
Fredericksburg battle, December 13th,) I hurriedly went down to the
field of war in Virginia. But I must go back a little.