True To His Colors. Castlemon Harry

listen to him. His Cousin Marcy had no father (he was lost at sea when the boy and his older brother, Jack, were quite young), and he believed as his mother did – that slavery was wrong, that the Union was right, and that those who wanted to destroy it were fanatics who did not know what they were about. But Marcy was not a passive Unionist. On the day South Carolina began threatening secession, he declared that she ought to be whipped into submission; and he had never ceased to proclaim his principles in spite of the lowering looks he saw and the threats he heard on every side. The boys declared that they would send him to Coventry; that is, withdraw from all fellowship with him; but when they came to try it, they found to their surprise and disgust, that they would have to go back on more than half the school, for some of the best boys in it promptly sided with Marcy. The latter had many friends, and the Union sentiment was strong in the academy; but on the morning that Rodney Gray read the extract from the Charleston Mercury, showing that South Carolina had made no idle threat when she threatened to secede if she could not have her own way, then the real test came. Many of the boys were astonished and shocked, for they had never believed that things would come to such a pass. The mail having just been distributed, they all had papers, but they did not stop to read them after listening to those ominous headlines. They shoved them into their pockets and went slowly out of the building, while Rodney and his fellows, who were almost beside themselves with exultation and excitement, made a rush for the stairs that led to the tower. On the way Rodney stopped to exchange a few words with his cousin.

      "You didn't think it would come, did you?" he exclaimed, walking up to Marcy and snatching away the paper on which the latter's eyes were fastened. "But you see it has, don't you? It seems that those furious threats about secession were not all talk, don't it? But seriously, Marcy, I know you stand where every other Southern boy stands, and that you are with us heart and soul. All I ask of you is to say so. Why don't you speak? Which side are you on, any way?"

      But Marcy did not utter a word. Although he looked straight at his cousin he did not appear to know that Rodney was talking to him, for his mind was busy with other matters.

      "Tell him you're neutral," suggested Dick Graham, whose home was in

      Missouri, and whom we may meet again under different circumstances.

      "That's what I am going to be, for I don't think my State will follow in

      South Carolina's lead."

      "But I am not neutral." replied Marcy, arousing himself at last. "I am for the Union all over, and I'm sorry we haven't a Jackson in Washington at this moment to say that it must and shall be preserved. I hope Buchanan will send ships enough into Charleston harbor to blow that miserable State out of water."

      "Let him try it, and see how quickly the other Cotton States will arm to help her," exclaimed Bob Cole, who was one of Rodney's friends and followers. "Coerce a sovereign State? The President can't do it. The Constitution does not give him the power."

      Bob Cole did not know it, and neither did any of the other boys who were standing around listening to his fiery words, but that was the very argument the frightened chief magistrate was going to put forth in his next message to Congress.

      "The President will only make a bad matter worse if he tries any fool thing like that," continued Bob, who, like most of the boys of that section of the country, had heard these matters discussed so often that he had them at his tongue's end. "I tell you that the events of yesterday are an entering wedge. We are tired of the company of those Yankees up North, and now we are going to get rid of them and have a government of our own; see if we don't. Why should we not? The people up there do not belong to the same race we do. They are regicides and Roundheads – plodding, stingy folks, in whose eyes a dollar looks as big as a cart-wheel. The race who settled Virginia and scattered all over these Southern States, were cavaliers and money spenders, and their descendants are the same. We've wanted to get rid of them ever since 1830, and now we are going to do it. Patrick Henry warned us against forming a partnership with them in the first place."

      "Whom do you mean by us and we?" demanded Marcy, who had listened in silence to this speech, which was addressed to the boys gathered in the hall rather than to himself. "You don't live in South Carolina."

      "No, but I do," said Ed Billings, elbowing his way to the foot of the stairs on which Bob had perched himself when he began his address. "I go with my State, and you will have to go with yours or show yourself a traitor."

      "A traitor to what?" inquired Marcy.

      "To your State," Billings almost shouted.

      "My State hasn't seceded yet; but if she does, and I go with her, how will I stand in regard to the old flag – the one that waves over this academy?"

      Billings tried to answer, but his voice was drowned in the wild shouts that arose from the assembled students.

      "Haul the flag down!" they yelled, almost as one boy.

      "No, no," cried some of the more reasonable ones, after they had taken time to think twice. "Let's wait upon the colonel and request him to have it taken down."

      "There's one thing I want you all to bear in mind," added a tall fellow, who hearing the tumult in the hall had come back to see what it was all about. "Those colors shall not come down without the colonel's orders, and I'll mix up promiscuous with any chap who lays an ugly hand upon them."

      So it seemed that the old flag had defenders even here; and although it may not have had a very sincere friend in the person of the head of the school, he positively refused to order it down, or to permit the students to pull it down. It would be time enough to attend to that when they learned what the State was going to do. The boys went away disappointed; but the most of them believed that the day would come when they could work their sweet will with that "emblem of tyranny," as they had already begun to call it.

      From that time forward there were none in all the length and breadth of the land who kept a closer watch upon passing events than did the three hundred students of the Barrington military academy; but it is a question whether they did not imbibe a great many false ideas along with the news they read. The Southern press never did deal fairly with its readers. All dispatches favorable to the secessionists and their cause were published, as a matter of course; but those that were not favorable were either suppressed entirely, or distorted out of all semblance to the truth. They began this course in the early days of the Confederacy and kept it up to the end, one of their generals forging a telegraph dispatch, in which he announced that he had won a great battle, during which he killed and captured twenty thousand Federals, and destroyed four of Porter's gunboats.

      For three months the flag that floated over the academy held its place. Persevering and daring attempts were made to steal it at night, but they were every one frustrated by the vigilance and courage of the boys who had not yet lost all love for it, and for the memory of those whose deeds it commemorated. When the colonel announced that he would take charge of the bunting at night the Union boys thought it would be in safe hands; but it turned out afterward that they were mistaken.

      The tension of brain and nerve to which the students were subjected during the next few weeks was something to wonder at, and every day added to their suspense and anxiety. South Carolina sent commissioners to other States, urging them to join her in the secession movement, and one of them shouted to the citizens of Georgia: "Buy arms, and throw the bloody spear into the den of the assassins and incendiaries, and God defend the right!" But Stephens said in reply: "I tell you frankly that the election of a man constitutionally chosen president is not sufficient cause for any State to separate from the Union." And yet in a very few weeks this same Alexander H. Stephens was vice-president of the Confederacy. Mississippi went out of the Union first, and others followed, until there were seven of them to organize a new government under a new flag. Then it was that the first open attempt was made to haul the old banner down from the academy flag-staff; but it was promptly met, and although Rodney Gray and his followers had been reinforced by nearly all the students belonging to the seceded States, the Union boys were strong enough to drive them down stairs, through the hall, and out of the building. They tried to be as good-natured as they could about it, but there were a few fights that took place before the peaceable ones could interfere, and the result was that Rodney Gray and some others found themselves in the guard-house. But they were never brought to trial,