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at Frederick, but contained just enough of loyal leaven, acting with and upon its "conservative" and timid elements, to induce delay and irresolution in all its action until the hour for successful treason had gone by.

President Lincoln authorized General Butler to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in certain districts, but no strictly military movement was attempted until May 13. Then, under cover of a storm and the approach of night, General Butler, with less than a thousand men, suddenly entered Baltimore, seized a position from which his guns commanded the city, and effected a complete capture of it without the loss of a man. It was a deed the success of which justified its apparently reckless daring.

The "siege of Washington" was raised, the State of Maryland was forever lost to the Confederacy, and its population generally, if slowly, ranged themselves among the assured supporters of the national authority. The possible line of subsequent conflict at once drifted Southward from the banks of the Chesapeake to those of the Potomac, and the entire aspect of affairs changed.

A striking illustration of the difficulty under which Mr. Lincoln began his work and the darkness he was in as to whom he could employ and trust as servants of the new government is afforded by the case of Colonel Robert E. Lee, of the regular army. So complete had been the confidence reposed in this man's honor and patriotism, and so carefully had he abstained from giving any token of disloyalty, that, as late as April 20, he was informally offered the command of the Union forces about to take the field. His response was a resignation of his commission in the army, dated the same day. Three days later he was formally installed as commander of the State forces of Virginia. These were turned over to the " Army of the Confederacy" on the 24th of May, and he with them, to receive at once a commission as full" general" under the Rebel flag. No doubt he acted in accordance with his ideas of his duty to the

State in which he had happened to be born and which was more sacred in his eyes than was the government to which he had sworn allegiance; but his course throws a lurid light upon the harassing perils of Mr. Lincoln's position. While such lessons of caution as this were daily given and received in the most surprising manner, a wise reticence kept most of them from the immediate knowledge of the nation at large.

The President's proclamation called for State militia, in nominal accordance with laws which were considered by many jurists to be severely strained by the summons. The troops were rapidly coming forward, but the force they would constitute could be but little better than a temporary expedient, as their term of service was but ninety days. The entire attention of the public mind was concentrated upon and absorbed by the several State contingents, and small notice was bestowed upon a much more important exercise of the latent powers of the national executive.

Mr. Lincoln's experience in the Blackhawk War, brief as it was, had taught him a vitally important lesson as to the nature, value, and melting-away tendencies of all such extemporized armies. Neither had he read the history of the Revolutionary War so carefully in his boyhood, without storing his mind with its most important military lsssons. Precisely the difficulties which at times so paralyzed the genius of Washington were right before him now, and he prepared for them in advance.

Volunteers were freely offering, all over the North, and it was but ten days after issuing the proclamation, or on April 26, that Mr. Lincoln sent out official notifications through the War Department that a certain number of these, 44,034, would be accepted "for three years or during the war." He had no warrant of law, apparently, for any increase of the regular army or navy, but he had at the same time called for 22,714 “regulars" and 18,000 seamen.

All this was somewhat quietly done; but the Northern allies of the rebels in arms did not fail to express their opinion of it

openly and very freely. In their eyes, and as expressed by their tongues and pens, it was the unscrupulous deed of a tyrant, a dictator, a would-be autocrat. There was in it, indeed, a good deal of that patriotic autocracy which refused to let the nation lie still and be murdered while thousands of willing hearts were offering strong hands to defend it.

The acceptances of men were by no means rigidly limited to the terms of the first War Office orders, and it was soon safe to say that there would be an army in the field after the militia regiments should serve their time and go home.

After all, one of the most important matters was that nothing should be done too audaciously startling and suggestive of aggression and invasion."

The incipient rebellion in Maryland was now completely crushed. The dangerous elements were weeded out of the State Legislature, a little, by a few salutary arrests. There was no longer any peril threatening the city of Washington in the rear. Nevertheless, the Confederate flag still flaunted in the face of the national capital from the roof of Arlington House as late as May 23, eighty days after President Lincoln's inauguration. There was nothing except the date of the Virginia election to prevent the planting of a rebel battery in General Lee's front yard. Such a battery would have been within easy range of all the government buildings, and would have commanded the Long Bridge over the Potomac, with all its northern approaches. The range of low elevations on the Virginia shore of the Potomac was evidently calling loudly for occupation. Advices from the South added strength to all considerations based upon military science, but not one step was visibly taken which could appear to threaten, much less to assail, "the rights of a sovereign State," until she should formally divest herself of them. No solitary Virginia voter was afforded a fresh pretext for casting his misguided ballot in favor of the "Ordinance of Secession."

CHAPTER XXX.

OVER THE LONG BRIDGE.

Respects for State Rights-Secession of Virginia-Union Advance across the Potomac-Death of Ellsworth-The Beginning in West Virginia -The Old Flag disappears from the South-White House Life-Wartime Illusions-Studies of future Battle-grounds-A Funeral in the East Room.

NOTHING Could well exceed the closeness with which Mr. Lincoln watched the course of events at the South, or the logical sequence of the steps which he took in pursuance of each and every movement made by his adversaries. Up to this last hour, he had neither done nor authorized any proceeding, as to Virginia, which the most fanatical expounder of "State rights" could reasonably call in question.

There was a small guard kept, to be sure, at the Long Bridge over the Potomac, to prevent its very possible destruction, but there was no vexatious interference with travel and traffic or even with the passage of Maryland stray volunteers for the rebel army. More than once, after nightfall, the squad of Union soldiers in charge at that point went hilariously over and hobnobbed with the Virginia State militia similarly posted at the old tavern on the other shore, and were hardly reprimanded by their officers for so doing. Even in the serious matters of the Gosport navy-yard and the Harper's Ferry arsenal, all pains were taken to avoid any open collision with the forces sent by the governor of Virginia for their seizure. Forbearance was carried to the utmost limit of endurance, but there it expired, strictly by limitation.

In accordance with the action of the Virginia State Conven

tion, the question of the secession of the State was submitted to a popular vote on the 23d of May. Except in what now constitutes the State of West Virginia, no such thing as a fair and free expression of the popular will was possible, for military movements had begun and military domination rendered the so-called "vote" a mere matter of form. There was little use in counting such a preordained collection as were those heaps of ballots.

Nevertheless, although General Lee assumed command of the State troops on the 23d of April, and all men knew the use he would surely make of them, they could not be and were not turned over to the Confederate army, so losing their character as "State" troops, until the 24th of May. The Confederate leaders were therefore yet in some degree hindered by the constitutional and legal technicalities whose spirit and letter had been so much more carefully regarded by Mr. Lincoln.

They were themselves seemingly prompt enough in their operations, so soon as their hands were untied, but they were not at all prepared for the electric suddenness and energy of his final action.

The Virginia Convention's Act of Secession was duly confirmed by the formal election-returns, not yet made up but perfectly well known, at the setting of the sun on May 23, 1861. Within one hour afterwards there were columns of United States troops in motion towards the Northern shore of the Potomac and the Washington end of the Long Bridge. Before midnight a light force of scouts and skirmishers crossed the bridge and began to feel their way down towards Alexandria. This advance consisted of but one company, barely sixty men all told, and all the armed opposition they met or saw was a mere squad of mounted Virginia militia who rode hurriedly away without firing a shot. By two o'clock A.M., the same night, three full regiments had crossed the Potomac at Georgetown, D. C.; four more by the Long Bridge; and one, Ellsworth's Zouaves, had gone directly to Alexandria by steamer,

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