Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/736

726 If we accomplished this, "the scoffer need not laugh, nor the judicious grieve," for our mountain did not bring forth a mouse,—our "mission to Richmond" was not a failure.

It was a difficult enterprise. At the outset it seemed wellnigh impossible to gain access to Mr. Davis; but we finally did gain it, and we gained it without official aid. Mr. Lincoln did not assist us. He gave us a pass through the army-lines, stated on what terms he would grant amnesty to the Rebels, and said, "Good-bye, good luck to you," when we went away; and that is all he did.

It was also a hazardous enterprise,—no holiday adventure, no pastime for boys. It was sober, serious, dangerous work,—and work for men, for cool, earnest, fearless, determined men, who relied on God, who thought more of their object than of their lives, and who, for truth and their country, were ready to meet the prison or the scaffold.

If any one doubts this, let him call to mind what we had to accomplish. We had to penetrate an enemy's lines, to enter a besieged city, to tell home truths to the desperate, unscrupulous leaders of the foulest rebellion the world has ever known, and to draw from those leaders, deep, adroit, and wary as they are, their real plans and purposes. And all this we had to do without any official safeguard, while entirely in their power, and while known to be their earnest and active enemies. One false step, one unguarded word, one untoward event would have consigned us to Castle Thunder, or the gallows.

Can any one believe that men who undertake such work are mere lovers of adventure, or seekers of notoriety? If any one does believe it, let him pardon me, if I say that he knows little of human nature, and nothing of human history.

I am goaded to these remarks by the strictures of the Copperhead press, but I make them in no spirit of boasting. God forbid that I should boast of anything we did! For we did nothing. Unseen influences prompted us, unseen friends strengthened us, unseen powers were all about our way. We felt their presence as if they had been living men; and had we been atheists, our experience would have convinced us that there is a, and that He means that all men, everywhere, shall be free.

of all childlike dreams

In the simple Indian lore

Still to me the legend seems

Of the Elves who flit before.

Flitting, passing, seen and gone,

Never reached nor found at rest,

Baffling search, but beckoning on

To the Sunset of the Blest.

From the clefts of mountain rocks,

Through the dark of lowland firs,

Flash the eyes and flow the locks

Of the mystic Vanishers!