Even after the bombardment of Sumter, however, the gravity of the
revolt, and the power and will of the slave States for a strong and
continued military resistance to national authority, were not at all
realized at the North, except by a few. Nine-tenths of the people of
the free States look'd upon the rebellion, as started in South Carolina,
from a feeling one-half of contempt, and the other half composed of
anger and incredulity. It was not thought it would be join'd in by
Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia. A great and cautious national
official predicted that it would blow over "in sixty days," and folks
generally believ'd the prediction. I remember talking about it on a
Fulton ferry-boat with the Brooklyn mayor, who said he only "hoped the
Southern fire-eaters would commit some overt act of resistance, as they
would then be at once so effectually squelch'd, we would never hear of
secession again--but he was afraid they never would have the pluck to
really do anything."
I remember, too, that a couple of companies of the Thirteenth Brooklyn,
who rendezvou'd at the city armory, and started thence as thirty days'
men, were all provided with pieces of rope, conspicuously tied to their
musket-barrels, with which to bring back each man a prisoner from the
audacious South, to be led in a noose, on our men's early and triumphant
return!