the Second; Colonel Thomas J. Whipple, of the Fourth; Colonel J. E. Larkin, of the Fifth; Dr. Sherman Cooper, of the Sixth, and Colonel Robert Wilson, of the Fourteenth, for aid in the preparation of the history of their several regiments. To Hon. Charles H. Bell, of Exeter and J. E. Pecker, of Concord, for contributions. To Colonel John B. Clarke, of the Manchester Mirror, for the use of his files, and to many other gentlemen who have shown interest in the work and extended needed favors.

The portraits presented in this volume are of New Hampshire men who acted their parts in the great tragic drama, at home or in the field, nobly and patriotically. Many others deserve a place here, but for reasons beyond the author's control, could not be obtained.

With all its short-comings and imperfections this book is submitted to the people of New Hampshire, with the hope that at no very distant day a more elaborate and complete history may be written and published of the patriotic action of the State, and of the heroic deeds of her brave troops in the War of the Great Rebellion, than has here been attempted.

CLAREMONT, April A. D. 1870.

O. F. B. W.

THE REBELLION.

PART I.

POSITION OF AFFAIRS PREVIOUS TO AND AT THE TIME OF THE BREAKING OUT OF THE WAR.

ROM the day of the adoption of the Constitution

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there has been an antagonism between the Northern and the Southern portions of the United States.That Constitution contains not one word hostile to liberty and humanity. In it, however, is a single phrase which has been interpreted differently by the different sections of the country-"held to labor." At the North, these simple, harmless words mean a hired man, an apprentice. At the South, they mean a slave, feudal bondage, the right of property in man, and all the attendant oppressions and cruelties. From these different constructions of the spirit of the organic law of the country, and the widely different modes of life and of thought, the antagonism between the North and the South has grown with the growth and strengthened with the strength of the nation. Mr. Iverson, of Georgia, in speaking on this subject in the United States Senate, on the 5th of December, 1860, said, "Sir, disguise the fact as you will, there is an enmity between the Northern and the Southern people, which is deep

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and enduring, and you can never eradicate it-never. .... We are enemies as much as if we were hostile States. We have not lived in peace. We are not now living in peace. It is not expected that we shall ever live in peace."

Mr. Mason, of Virginia, in the same debate, said, "This is a war of sentiment and opinion, by one form of society against another form of society."

Garrett Davis, senator from Kentucky, said, "The Cotton States, by their slave labor, have become wealthy, and many of their planters have princely revenuesfrom fifty to one hundred thousand dollars a year. This wealth has begot pride, and insolence, and ambition; and those points of the Southern character have been displayed most insultingly in the halls of Congress. As a class, the wealthy cotton growers are insolent, they are proud, they are domineering, they are ambitious. They have monopolized the government in its honors for forty or fifty years, with few interruptions. When they saw the scepter about to depart from them, in the election of Abraham Lincoln, sooner than give up office, and the spoils of office, in their mad and wicked ambition, they determined to disrupt the old Confederation, and erect a new one, wherein they would have undisputed power. Nine out of ten of the Northern people were sound upon the subject. They were opposed to the extension of slavery; and I do not condemn them for that: but they were willing to accord to the slaveholders all their constitutional rights."

The slaveholders had become arrogant in their demands upon Congress, claiming that the Constitution favored freedom, free labor, and free schools, and that it should be so far changed as to maintain the exclusive claims of an aristocratic class, and to strengthen their hold upon their slaves. They insisted that the domestic slave trade should be nurtured, and the foreign slave