Lincoln hid his anxiety as he could, while he waited for the outcome. He went to church in the morning. In the early afternoon, rumors of all kinds flew about. When he called on General Scott at three o'clock, he found the aged soldier asleep in his office. The General woke up sufficiently to express his confidence in the result, and fell asleep again as the President left. Definite news of a great Union success came later, and Lincoln went for a drive. At six o'clock, Seward hurried to the White House and excitedly asked for the President. "The battle is lost," he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper. General McDowell was in full retreat, and calling on General Scott to save the capital. Lincoln returned in a few minutes and heard in silence the report of the disaster. Without saying a word or betraying by look any disappointment, he turned from the door of the White House and went to the War Department. As the fleeing fugitives from the scene of defeat straggled breathlessly into the city toward midnight, Lincoln, stretched on the lounge in the cabinet room, received the wild reports of the rout and of the probable capture of Washington. No one realized that in the clash of two green armies, the victors were almost as completely overcome by surprise as were the vanquished themselves. The Confederates, content to hold the ground from which they had driven the Federals, made no forward movement on the capital. When morning came, Lincoln still lay on the lounge, listening and making notes, for he had neither gone to bed nor slept. All day Monday, under the gloom of a rainy sky, the beaten and demoralized troops waded through the muddy streets. The North was humiliated and embittered. The confusion threatened to run into chaos. storm. Lincoln showed no sign of wavering in the furious On the contrary, those who watched him were inspired when they saw beneath the sadness which enveloped him like a cloud, an added strength of purpose, a deeper determination. He was learning, side by side with the people, the awful price which must be paid for the salvation of the Union. IN THE GLOOM OF DEFEAT 9. George B. McClellan appointed to the command of the Army of the Potomac, July 27, 1861.—The armies costing $2,000,000 a day with no battles won. The seizure of Mason and Slidell, November 8, 1861, brought threats of war from the British. Victoria and Lincoln working together for peace. - Great success of Lincoln's statesmanship in winning the border states. -Stanton called to the Cabinet, January 13, 1862. - Grant's capture of Fort Donelson, February 16. The Merrimack sank the Cumberland in Hampton Roads, March 8.- - Alarm in the North. The victory of the Monitor, March - Lincoln's simple faith. Farragut captured New Orleans, April 25. McClellan's unsuccessful Peninsular Campaign against Richmond, March 17 to July 2. Second defeat at Bull Run, August 30.-Victory at Antietam, September 16-17. — Emancipation Proclamation, September 22. — The winter of 1862-1863 the darkest since Valley Forge. A movement to force Lincoln to resign. The disasters of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862, and Chancellorsville, May 2-4, 1863. — Lincoln's courage. - Lee's invasion of the North. LINCOLN wasted no time in fighting over again a battle that was lost. He offered no defence for himself, and found no fault with others. To cheer the disheartened soldiers of Bull Run, he went among them in their camps as if they had won a victory, and no officer heard a word of complaint from his lips. There were those in the North who were so dismayed by the retreat, that they lost all faith in the success of the Union. Horace Greeley wrote to Lincoln in despair. "You are not considered a great man, he frankly said, “and I am a hopelessly broken one,” and he called upon the President to sacrifice himself "if the Union is irrevocably gone," and give up the needless struggle. Counsels like these, while they did not seem to weaken the purpose of Lincoln, must have heavily taxed his fortitude. Men who pressed about him with conflicting advice, found him not thinking of the past, but of the future. The very day after Bull Run, on the advice of General Scott and with the enthusiastic approval of the country, he appointed George B. McClellan to the command of the routed army. McClellan was a brilliant engineer graduate of West Point, who had resigned a railway presidency and surrendered a salary of ten thousand dollars to enter the military service at the outbreak of the war. In a series of skirmishes, he had driven scattered bands of Confederates out of the mountains of western Virginia, and secured that region to the Union. Although, before this brief campaign, he never had commanded more than a company of men, or held higher rank than captain, he came to the |