cluded from his thought than they were from the express terms of the proclamation.

There was little occasion for Mr. Lincoln to express himself upon doctrinal points. His early life and subsequent associations had put it out of his power to examine, approve, and accept any one formulated creed of any one church or sect, even if he had set himself at the task of selection; but his reverence for God and His revealed law continued to increase.

When a delegation of well-meaning gentlemen called upon him to urge, in effect, that no more battles should be fought on Sunday, as so many already had been fought, he could reply, half humorously, that the Rebel commanders would need to be taken into consultation before anything definite could be done in that direction. Nevertheless, on the 16th of November, 1862, he sent out to the soldiers a circular letter which gave his views upon the Sunday question very distinctly. He urged upon them that, "The importance for man and beast of the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment of a Christian people, and a due regard for the Divine Will, demand that Sunday labor in the army and navy be reduced to the measure of strict necessity." He added, even more strenuously: "The discipline and character of the national forces should not suffer, nor the cause they defend be imperiled, by the profanation of the day or the name of the Most High."

The only escape from the obvious meaning of these and many other similar utterances, as expressions of the operations and condition of Mr. Lincoln's mind at this time, is to roundly charge him with hypocrisy.

This, too, has been done; but the absurdity of the allegation comes out in strong relief when the words he spoke are examined in connection with dates and facts, and particularly when collated with the sad event in his own family.

It is now forever too late to call in question either the fact or

the depth of his religious convictions. It is too late to deny that he again and again made public as well as private profession of his simple faith. Especially is it of no manner of importance for the best of witnesses to testify, "he used to talk, sometimes, kind o' half-way infidel, when I knew him, back in Illinois." The testimony may cheerfully be accepted as honestly given, but it does not bear at all upon the case before the

court.

1

TY

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CHAPTER XLIII.

THE TRENT AFFAIR.

Two Frontier Posts-Western Successes-A Slice at a Time-Trouble with
England-Shortsighted Patriotism-A Message to the English People-
Captain Wilkes Promoted-Border State Unionism.

Ar the outset of the Rebellion the District of Columbia was
as much within the intended boundaries of the Confederacy as
was any
similar area on the northern line of the State of Ten-
nessee. Maryland was even more nearly ready for secession
than Kentucky; and the difficulty of retaining either State
in the Union was about the same, and required the operation
of competent armed forces as well as prudent statesmanship.
Washington city was therefore, in the beginning, a position
occupied by the Union troops well within the enemy's lines.
Afterwards it became an all-important frontier post.

That the city was occupied or held at all was due to Mr. Lincoln's success in carrying on the war for months before the people generally knew there was one going forward.

A serious aggravation and complication of the difficulties of the situation resulted from this history and locality of the political capital. The minds of men, at home and abroad, became absorbed in watching the fluctuations of the struggle for the capture, at one time, of the city of Washington and, at another, of the almost correspondingly situated city of Richmond. The interest in these campaigns, their advances and retreats, their many and bloody battles, became so deep that equally important contests in other parts of the great field failed to receive the popular attention they merited. Had the importance of successes in the West been better understood by

the people, their depressions over disasters in the East would have been, at times, advantageously diminished.

To the mind of Mr. Lincoln, as to many other minds, civil and military, it was an axiom that the Confederacy must needs be taken possession of, as he curtly expressed it, "a slice at a time." That was the way in which it was done; but it was not always easy to persuade men of the value of the consecutive slices as they were cut off and secured.

In the early days of the war the great State of Missouri was more in doubt as to its political future than was Maryland. Its loss would have entailed consequences every way as disastrous to the Union cause; but the rapid series of movements and successes, beginning with those of General John C. Frémont, which placed it beyond the reach of the Confederate commanders was but moderately appreciated on the Atlantic seaboard and not at all in Europe. It was won and held by achievements of high merit both in statesmanship and arms; and in like manner was the State of Kentucky severed from the hopes of the Confederacy. Subsequent operations were transferred from the Ohio River and the Illinois line of the Mississippi River and the Iowa border, away down to the line of the Cumberland River, and the grand result was accepted by the public very much as if a ripe apple had fallen from a tree. The consecutive apples fell, indeed, but the shaking of the tree began very early in the season and cost the lives of many thousands of brave men.

There was a respectable amount of popular rejoicing when a permanent foothold was won, by the Federal forces under Burnside, on the sea-coast of North Carolina; but the grumbling multitude refused to see that it was of any great importance to the general result.

Even when, in April, 1862, the city of New Orleans, and with it the mouth of the Mississippi River, fell into the hands of the national troops and a fair degree of enthusiasm was kindled, for a moment, nine men out of ten would have tossed

their hats more zealously over the news of a much less fruitful victory on the Potomac.

It was not so with Mr. Lincoln. From first to last he watched the course of events in the West with an interest which never flagged. All that country was familiar ground to him, and he made himself thoroughly master of the peculiar campaigning required for its reduction. He knew the rivers and their variations of flood and fall; the lowlands and the highlands and their roads and lack of roads; more than all, he knew, better than did the Eastern generals and statesmen around him, the peculiar characteristics of the varied populations and how very far they were from being one people.

The civil war was a War for the Union in more ways than one. In all its processes it operated as a national unifier, and Mr. Lincoln aided the processes as best he could. He drew Western soldiers to fight in the Army of the Potomac until he changed materially the originally somewhat sectional composition of that organism. He sent Eastern troops to join in the marches and battles in Kentucky and Tennessee. It was not' by any manner of accident that volunteers from widely separated localities found themselves marching up to the guns of the enemy shoulder to shoulder. Even as early as December, 1862, the records show that the Army of the Potomac contained regiments, batteries, or brigades from Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Illinois. At a somewhat later date, the Army of the Cumberland contained, in like manner, distinct organizations from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, and Maine. This wise blending of the contingents of the several States continued to the end of the war.

How closely the President watched the military operations in the West appears from his dispatches and correspondence. It is further illustrated by his recognition of the successive achievements of Pope, Halleck, Sherman, Sheridan, Grant, and a long list of other meritorious officers.