Of naval affairs, as such, Mr. Lincoln knew but little. He had never been upon salt water nor examined a vessel of war. He had, however, studied with care and acquired an intimate, practical knowledge of the navigation of the great rivers of the West. These latter and their flotilla, present and prospective, were judiciously loosened somewhat from the control of the Navy Department. They remained to the end under the especial care of the man who had himself been a “river-pilot,” who had made and managed flatboats, and who had mastered problems of fresh-water navigation which would have been new and strange to the most accomplished seaman in the Atlantic squadron.

There was little difficulty in obtaining the services of all desirable sea-going vessels, owing to the panic created among the commercial classes by the Confederate threat of privateering. Owners were eager to place their ships and steamers under the national flag, whether by sale or charter. There were notable instances of patriotic liberality in this direction, but there were more of a kind hardly so creditable to human nature. These latter may be fairly illustrated by the case of a Connecticut merchant who urged Mr. Lincoln to purchase "for war purposes" a batch of worn-out whaling-schooners. No longer fit to deal with a whale, they were just the thing in which a crew of brave men under government pay could pursue, fight, capture, a fleet of French or English armed steamers under the rebel flag.

Mr. Lincoln preferred to look on the ludicrous side of such incidents as this and a hundred other manifestations of stupid greed which daily came before him. He was genuinely glad to be able to do so. He freely declared, to more than one who conversed with him, that the most important relief to his heavy load of care and anxiety was that which he found in his capacity for enjoying fun for its own sake. He could still tell a story or laugh at a joke, and he could still use either as a weapon or a shield. In any form of employment they per

formed invaluable uses. Those whose solemn shallowness enables them to disregard the structure of the human mind and brain, or to confound the one with the other, will probably continue to wonder at the trustworthy anecdotes of the President's unaccountable frivolity in those days of overstrain.

The beetle sees a giant laugh while he is lifting a rock, and indignantly remarks to the glow-worm at his side: "The fellow is indecent. You or I would have done it with due solemnity."

CHAPTER XXXII.

BULL RUN.

Checker-board Campaign Plans-On to Richmond-The Two ArmiesDissolved Militia-Congressional Legislation Under Sudden Pressure -The President's Message-Five Hundred Thousand Men.

THE growth and development of the people of the United States up to the outbreak of the Rebellion had been attained through processes peculiarly peaceful. On the first day of June, 1861, it could have been said of them all, both North and South of the Potomac and Ohio rivers, that no one of their characteristics was more distinctly marked than their ig norance of war. The living generation had no memory or knowledge of its effects, and the idea that it might be or that it involved a distinct science had dawned upon but few minds among them.

The next most important fact, politically, was the stoneblindness of the masses to the fact of their own ignorance.

The South believed itself essentially martial, and a great deal had latterly been done to make it so. It was in vastly better condition for warlike purposes than was the North, and the people of the latter section were ignorant of this fact also.

All over the free States the newspaper editors and local orators, great and small, dabbled fiercely in patriotic statesmanship. They united in assuring the President that they had supplied him with "an army," and that he was in duty bound to crush the Rebellion with it. The prevalent idea of army. movements appears to have been borrowed from the black and white squares of a checker-board and their easily transferable " buttons." Substitute the seceded territory for the checker

board, and the President's obvious business was to win the game at once, while so many eager people were looking on and were waiting impatiently to see him do it.

The cry of "On to Richmond!" now began to rise, with a full-throated volume which threatened to drown the explanatory reply that there were many brave men, with rifles in their hands, standing right in the way.

A badly managed skirmish at Big Bethel, Virginia, on the 10th of June, costing several valuable lives, did but whet the popular appetite for military activity. Little affairs of even less bloodshed, but with more important results, took place in West Virginia. The "battle of Boonville," Missouri, was faintly fought and fled from by the Rebel militia on the 17th of June, and it was urged that the Confederate forces between Washington and Richmond would scatter as promptly as their Western brethren, if advanced upon in a similar manner.

Mr. Lincoln did not share in this delusion, but both he and his military counselors were aware that there were positions of great strategic importance which might well be seized and occupied, with a view to further operations. The most important of these, as was afterwards proved, was the one upon which the first movement was planned by the generals on both sides.

Manassas Junction was the point where the railroad from Alexandria, on the Potomac, met the railway connecting the rest of Virginia with the Shenandoah Valley. It had been feebly occupied by the State militia of Virginia, even before the secession of that commonwealth, and it was made a rallyingpoint for subsequent levies. About the first of June, 1861, General Beauregard, of the Confederate army, was sent to take command of the forces assembled for the protection of the Manassas lines. These were, therefore, the first obstruction in the way of any direct movement on to Richmond."

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The Union troops were mainly composed of State militia, and these were all "three-months men." They included all the

well-drilled and disciplined regiments, for the "regulars" were few indeed, and the volunteers were yet hardly fit for use as soldiers. The State-militia term of service was a most important factor in Mr. Lincoln's military calculations. It was so much so, that their melting away by reason of its expiration began before a blow could be struck. On the very eve of the battle of Bull Run, the Fourth Pennsylvania Regiment and Varian's Battery of (New York) Light Artillery were dismissed and marched away from the field of battle because their time had run out. Others, similarly circumstanced, remained, and took their share of the work in hand.

The forward movement called for by the country, and perhaps by military as well as political necessity, was ordered, and was made under General McDowell. With a dissolving army of less than twenty-eight thousand men and forty-nine guns, he fought an army of the best soldiers in the Confederacy, thirty-two thousand strong, with fifty-seven guns. Actual fighting began on the 18th of July, and it continued, with varied fluctuations, but with general good conduct of both officers and men on both sides, until the so-called "panic" of the Union troops. This took place on the afternoon of the 21st. By that time a large part of the Rebel forces had been so severely handled that they were under a strong impression that they had been defeated. They were only a little less disorganized for military purposes than were their tired-out and routed antagonists. It afterwards required some investigation to assure the Confederate commanders of their victory. Even when satisfied of the fact, they were in no condition to follow it up. The losses on both sides, officially reported, were: United States-25 guns, 481 men killed, 1011 wounded, 1460 prisoners sent to Richmond, including many wounded; Confederates-387 men killed, 1582 wounded, and a few pri

soners.

It was a hard-fought action, and the "panic" was simply the disintegration of a number of regiments of raw troops, worn