“Apathy and Enthusiasm”

The poem “Apathy and Enthusiasm” is divided into two stanzas. The first describes the depressing winter of 1860-1861, the period just before the fall of Sumter; and the second compares the coming of the spring of 1861 to the burst of patriotism and enthusiasm that sprang up at the same time:

O, the rising of the People
Came with springing of the grass,
They rebounded from dejection
After Easter came to pass.
And the young were all elation
Hearing Sumter’s cannon roar.

Melville probably got the idea for this poem from a New York Times editorial of April 16, 1861, titled “The Resurrection of Patriotism” and reprinted in Volume I of the Record (Documents, p. 62). The following passage reveals Melville's debt:

The hearts of our own people had begun to sink within them, at the apparent insensibility of the public to the dangers that menaced the government. The public mind seemed to have been demoralized,—the public heart seemed insensible to perils which threatened utter extinction to the great Republic. The secession movement, infinitely the most formidable danger which has ever menaced our government, was regarded with indifference and treated as merely a novel form of our usual political contentions. The best among us began to despair of a country which seemed incompetent to understand its dangers, and indifferent to its own destruction.
But all this has changed. The cannon which bombarded Sumter awoke strange echoes, and touched forgotten chords in the American heart. American loyalty leaped into instant life, and stood radiant and ready for the fierce encounter.

The sentiments of the second stanza, with its conclusion, “Grief to every graybeard /When young Indians lead the war,” owe nothing to the Times editorial.