ginians, before his eyes, while his undoubted love for the Union and his dread of drawing his sword against his native state painfully struggled for the mastery. Virginia won him. He resigned from the army and offered his services to the Governor at Richmond.

Not all saw their duty in the same light. Scott, Thomas, and Farragut were among the Southerners who stood at their posts against every temptation. When the offer to make him the commander of her troops came to Scott from Virginia, the state in which he was born, the old general replied, “I have served my country under the flag of the Union for more than fifty years, and as long as God permits me to live, I will defend that flag with my sword, even if my own native state assails it."

Lincoln took special pride in the report that not a private in the little army of sixteen thousand regulars forsook the colors. This force was so widely scattered, however, as to be of little use in the opening days of the war, when there were not soldiers enough in Washington to form a safe bodyguard for the President in the White House, which stood on southern soil and only across the Potomac River from the Confederate state of Virginia. When Sumter was fired on, all except six hundred soldiers of the regular army were guarding the distant frontier from the Indians.

Even before open hostilities began, double sentries were placed in the shrubbery of the White House grounds at night, and a small guard camped in the basement of the mansion. With the fall of Sumter, the capital was in dire need of defenders. There was gathered in Charleston alone a Confederate army which could be transported to Washington by rail in two days, and which was quite strong enough to seize the city. The volunteers in the eastern states, therefore, were despatched to the defence of the capital.

Washington was connected with the North by only one line of railway, running through Maryland. While a Massachusetts regiment was crossing Baltimore in cars drawn by horses, as the custom was at that time, the rails were torn up by a mob of blacks as well as whites, lashed to fury by the sight of the "Yankee invaders." There, on the anniversary of the battle of Lexington, the blood of Massachusetts was shed on the cobblestones of the city street, and when the command reached Washington in the evening, it marched to the Capitol followed by a line of stretchers bearing its wounded.

Το prevent the coming of any more troop trains to Baltimore, railway bridges were destroyed above that city, and Washington was cut off from the North. Baltimoreans came in delegations to insist

that no soldiers be brought across Maryland. “I must have troops to defend this capital," Lincoln reasoned with them; "geographically it lies surrounded by the soil of Maryland, and mathematically the necessity exists that they should come over her territory. Our men are not moles and cannot dig under the earth; they are not birds, and cannot fly through the air. There is no way but to march them across, and that they must do."

Through an anxious week, Lincoln waited for troops. "Why don't they come? Why don't they come?" he was heard to ask himself as he walked his office floor. "I begin to believe there is no North," he said to some men of the Massachusetts regiment. New York mails were three days in coming through. Even telegraphic communication was interrupted at times. The wildest rumors gained currency. Wagons moved through the streets, laden with the baggage and furniture of fleeing families. Mrs. Lincoln was urged to take her children and join in the flight, but she clung to her husband, protesting, "I shall never leave him here alone."

General Scott prepared to defend the place, point by point. The public buildings were barricaded. At every door of the Capitol, cement barrels, sand-bags, and heaps of iron were piled ten feet high. Office seekers found better use for their time than

haunting the anterooms. They were armed with muskets, revolvers, knives, and clubs, and a band of them camped in the great East Room of the White House, sleeping on the velvet carpet.

Famine menaced the city. The surrounding country had been well-nigh stripped of provisions, and the government seized a large quantity of flour in storage at a mill. After trying delays the soldiers began to arrive, however, by way of Annapolis, and soon nearly twenty thousand armed men were assembled. Washington was safe.

The new administration struggled beneath a tremendous burden. The Republican party was unused to power. Its leaders had been trained almost wholly in opposition. Lincoln, who was not accustomed to having even an office clerk under him, suddenly found himself charged with the task of organizing, equipping, and commanding an immense army.

Congress was not in session. The members of the cabinet were mere apprentices in their several branches; clerks resigned by the hundreds, and most of the experienced chiefs of bureaus had gone with the South. Seward was innocent of diplomacy. Chase, at the head of the Treasury, was a novice in finance. Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, was ignorant of naval affairs, and Cameron, the Secretary

of War, knew nothing of military matters. All were obliged to learn the very primer of their novel duties in the face of an enemy which had chosen specially trained men to lead it forward.

The army, badly crippled by the resignations of many able officers, was under the command of Lieutenant-general Scott, a veteran of the War of 1812 and of the war with Mexico, who at seventy-five still retained a stalwart spirit, but whose intellect was enfeebled by age and long service. The Adjutant-general had transferred himself to the same office in the hostile army. The younger men who were to captain the armies of the Union were yet in obscurity. Lincoln could only employ such talent as he found about him, and strive to inspire the slow-going and the timid with his own spirit of courage and activity.

The free states, however, fairly overwhelmed the government with their generosity in enlisting soldiers. Arms must be found for them and uniforms manufactured. Above all, money had to be. raised, and the national credit never was so low. Chase threatened the reluctant bankers that if they did not accept the bonds which he was issuing, he would flood the country with circulating notes, even if it should take a thousand dollars of such currency to buy a breakfast.