at-first

Updated: June 25, 2025

This hurry, I say, continued some weeks, that is to say, all the month of May and June, and the more because it was rumoured that an order of the Government was to be issued out to place turnpikes and barriers on the road to prevent people travelling, and that the towns on the road would not suffer people from London to pass for fear of bringing the infection along with them, though neither of these rumours had any foundation but in the imagination, especially at-first.

Daniel Defoe - A Journal of the Plague Year, written by a citizen who continued all the while in London

The Secretary of the Navy had hastened to approve officially the act of Captain Wilkes, commander of the "San Jacinto," and Secretary Stanton "cheered and applauded" it. Even Mr. Seward, cautious and conservative diplomat as he was, at-first "opposed any concession or surrender of the prisoners." But Lincoln said significantly, "One war at a time."

Francis F. (Francis Fisher) Browne - The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln: A Narrative And Descriptive Biography With Pen-Pictures And Personal: Recollections By Those Who Knew Him