The roasting of an Abolitionist, by a greatly infuriated community, was my first taste of the horrors of civil war. Heavens! Why will the North persist in this fratricidal warfare? The expulsion of several Union refugees, which soon followed, now fairly plunged my beloved State into the seething vortex.
I was sitting at the piano one afternoon, singing that stirring refrain, so justly celebrated, but which a craven spirit, unworthy of England, has excluded from some of her principal restaurants, and was dwelling with some enthusiasm on the following line:—
when a fragment of that scum, clothed in that detestable blue uniform which is the symbol of oppression, entered the apartment.
“I have the honor of addressing the celebrated rebel spy, Miss McGillup?” said the Vandal officer.
In a moment I was perfectly calm. With the exception of slightly expectorating twice in the face of the minion, I did not betray my agitation. Haughtily, yet firmly, I replied,—
“I am.”
“You looked as if you might be,” the brute replied, as he turned on his heel to leave the apartment.
In an instant I threw myself before him. “You shall not leave here thus,” I shrieked, grappling him with an energy which no one, seeing my frail figure, would have believed. “I know the reputation of your hireling crew. I read your dreadful purpose in your eye. Tell me not that your designs are not sinister. You came here to insult me,—to kiss me, perhaps. You shan’t,—you naughty man. Go away!”
The blush of conscious degradation rose to the cheek of the Lincoln hireling as he turned his face away from mine.
In an instant I drew my pistol from my belt, which, in anticipation of some such outrage, I always carried, and shot him.
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