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Perhaps we are doing as well as other States; but it nearly drives me mad when I see the American armies running before a generation of scoundrels, and American liberty almost prostrate before a power which challenges government itself, outrages humanity, and defies God; and when I know the full strength and power of our Massachusetts people is unused, and incapable of being fully used, by reason simply of formal and mechanical defects of system and method, I feel as if we absolutely did nothing.
Our State is one vast camp; the people, from midday until midnight, close their shops and stores, and work for the recruitment.
God only knows whether the President will ever burst his bonds of Border-Stateism and McClellan: but the people somehow are blessed with an instinct of faith, before which, I believe, mountains themselves will move; and I work with the same confidence and zeal as if I knew that they had moved already.
I believe that Providence has made too great an investment, alike in the history and in the capacity of this people, to permit their ruin. I am sure you feel as I do; and if I had a power of speech which could raise the dead, like the trumpet of an archangel, or if words could blister the granite rocks of Mount Washington, still, no voice nor language could express the sentiments of emotion which befit the occasion and the hour.
An arrangement was made, at this time, for the
Governors of the
New-England States to meet, as if accidentally, at the Commencement of Brown University, in
Providence, on the 3d of September, ‘for an hour of frank and uninterrupted conversation.’
The meeting was held; but no intimation of what was discussed, or what was done, appears upon the
Executive files.
In the latter part of August, the scene of active war was changed from before
Richmond, to the army under
General Pope, before
Washington.
The losses in the
Union army were very great.
The
Secretary of War telegraphed the
Governor to send forward additional surgeons to take charge of the sick and wounded.
Surgeon-General Dale was directed to make arrangements to comply with the request, and to send forward hospital stores.
On the 1st of September, the
Governor telegraphed to
Mr. Stanton,—
In obedience to your telegram received at five o'clock, Saturday afternoon, eleven first-rate surgeons started immediately; thirty more
