Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/501

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enterprise in which I had aspired to win for myself an honorable place among the men who have illustrated their country's history and shed lustre upon their country's flag, were thoughts which first seriously crossed my mind while returning on board, carrying in my hand the bloody record of Ball's Bluff. In the face of the startling intelligence which had crowded upon me since reaching Halifax, and which had now culminated; in the face of the duty which every man owes, in his own person, to his country when his country is in peril, I could not hesitate. Before I had reached my cabin, while our friends were yet in ignorance of our presence in the bay, I had resolved to postpone the execution of the task with which I had charged myself; and I closed as well the cruise as the project, by writing a letter to the President, asking for immediate employment in the public service, and offering my schooner to the government for a gun-boat.

Five years have now elapsed since the schooner United States crept to anchorage through the murky vapors of Boston Harbor. The terrible struggle then first realized by me, as at hand, is now over, and has become an event of history. The destinies of individuals are ever subordinate to the public weal; and in the presence of great social and political revolutions, when ideas are fringed with bayonets, and great interests are in conflict, men have little leisure for the consideration of questions of science, or of remote projects unconnected with the national safety.

Therefore it is that the further exploration of the Arctic regions was lost sight of by me during the past