Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/273

 properly call it my vanity—was immensely flattered by the thought of returning to Europe clothed in all the dignity of a Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary of the United States only a few years after having left my native land as a political refugee. When, however, I heard of the discussions that had preceded my appointment, I did not enjoy that triumph as I had thought I should. Even while receiving public and private congratulations in unexpected abundance, I was secretly troubled by a lurking doubt as to whether the office I had obtained was really one that I should hold, and whether the fact that my friends had sought it for me with my knowledge and approval, was not really equivalent to having asked for it myself. In this state of mind I left Washington for my home in Wisconsin.

I had not been there many days when the portentous news of the rebel attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor startled the country. The President's proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteers followed immediately, and, less that a week later, the bloody assault of a secessionist mob upon the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment passing through Baltimore. It is impossible to describe the electric effect these occurrences produced upon the popular mind in the Northern States. Until the first gun was fired upon Fort Sumter many patriotic people still entertained a lingering hope of saving the Union without a conflict of arms. Now civil war had suddenly become a certainty. The question of what might have been utterly vanished before the question of what was to be. A mighty shout arose that the Republic must be saved at any cost. It was one of those sublime moments of patriotic exaltation when everybody seems willing to do everything and to sacrifice everything for a common cause—one of those ideal sun-bursts in the history of nations.