HE Harvard student of to-day cannot well understand the strange conditions of excitement which pervaded the atmosphere and affected the lives of those who were at Harvard during the years of the great War of the Rebellion. Nor do I believe that the graduates of ten or twenty years before that epoch, now getting to be well advanced in age, could fairly comprehend what we, as boys, experienced at that time. And of those who were actually there, and took part in the events, there are not many; for, after all, it was a short transition period, the most interesting part of it being the beginning of the war, the spring of 1861, when we students felt that we were called upon to do something there, in the very place itself, to save the arsenal, and perhaps the college, from invasion and capture. Of the classes then at Harvard, none was more identified with this important work than the one to which I belonged, -the great and glorious class of 1863. We were then Sophomores, in the full tide of bumptiousness, and just at the age to enjoy the excitements of the occasion; and so I think we did. We graduated in July, 1863, when the early enthusiasms had passed away; there was no novelty in the situation, and those who entered the army then had learned that it was not to be the ninety days' picnic as first supposed. This was after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, when the back of the rebellion was broken. Looking calmly at it now, it seems as if the war should have ended then; as it would have been had it not been prolonged by the culpable vanity of Jefferson Davis, and the hopelessly stubborn resistance of the brave Confederate army. Slavery had been abolished by President Lincoln's proclamation on January 1, 1863, and so the results of the war had been assured before it was finished in the field. The continuance of the war after Commencement in 1863 gave me and many others the opportunity of taking part in it which would otherwise have been denied us; for my good mother had said from the beginning, when we all had more or 91624 Prof. Charles W. Eliot. FROM A PHOTO TAKEN IN 1863. less the war fever, that I could not go until I had graduated. I have thought, therefore, that some account of what was going on at college during those two years and more would I kept at the time, as well as by letters and other contributions from classmates and friends. Of course, too, I must rely considerably on memory, and as it is a memory which goes back nearly thirty years, it is to be expected that fancy will play her part in the tale. The political campaign of 1860 was the beginning of the new order of things. Abraham Lincoln was the candidate of the Republican party, then for the first time coming prominently before the people for their votes. I, like many others, had been brought up in the traditions of the good old Whig party. This is not the place to speak of what it had accomplished; but it had for years been a party of compromise, and such parties generally have to come to an end in a nation's crisis, and this crisis arrived later on with the fatal shot at Fort Sumter. During the autumn months of 1860 there was plenty of political talk and discussion, and we boys, although too young to have a vote, all the same were old enough to take part in what was going on, form, but we managed somehow to get torches, the distinguishing feature of such affairs, often extinguished before long on the march. I well remember one of these torchlight processions, which was in honor of Bell and Everett, the last candidates of the Whigs. "Bell and the Belles, 1860, Harvard," was our gallant motto, as one can see from the badge prepared for the occasion, which I have preserved as a souvenir. We met in that large open space by the Bratttle House, now the University Press, crowded ourselves into an omnibus, and drove over to Brookline, the starting place of the procession, which was to march through that town. There we were treated to "cakes and ale." We had no band, I believe, but were well supplied with our own musical talent, for it was our plan on the way back to stop at a few houses in Longwood and favor the young ladies with serenades, then much in vogue. We brought up at the mansion of Amos A. Lawrence, treasurer of Harvard College, who, when the war broke out, was one of the most energetic and patriotic of our citizens; also, at the house of the family of Dutton Russell, who lost two sons in the war. No better idea of this festivity can possibly be given than by the following stanzas, which I take from a letter in poetry written me by one of the most gifted men in our class, my dearest friend, then rusticated at Milton for some college escapade, Albert Kintzing Post of New York. Later he was a private and lieutenant in the 45th Mass. Regt. of Infantry, and was drowned at the early age of twentynine, trying to save the life of a boy with whom he had gone in bathing at West Hampton, Long Island. His son was the poet of the class that graduated at the last commencement. This is the way Post tells the story in what he calls "A Graduate's Lament": "It seems as though 'twere yesterday And well do I remember now Oh, those happy days at Harvard, of Professor Horsford. soon for "John Brown's Body" which later became the inspiring march music of the Union army, when that army had to be formed and march to save the nation. I remember one stanza which was much sung at that time, when John A. Andrew was Governor of Massachusetts, and has been since almost forgotten. Some will remember it. This is the way it went : "Tell John Andrew, certainly a dismal refrain. It was a winter of doubt and gloomy forebodings, and at length, on December 20th, a few days before Christmas and New Year, it was flashed over the wires that South Carolina had seceded from the Union. Well did Dr. Holmes express the situation when he wrote: "Ah! Caroline, Caroline, There are battles 'gainst fate Most of the old slaveholding states followed the example of South Carolina, at different dates in the month of January, |