The editors were given

instantaneous and most salutary. something new to write about for a while, and the men of action poured in steadier, more angrily determined streams towards the Federal recruiting offices. The whole people were taught, as it were in one day, much of the real nature of the gage of battle they had accepted, and they did not flinch for a moment from the grisly truth so presented to them.

To Mr. Lincoln himself, as a ruler, the fate of the militia army brought a tremendous justification of the steps he had taken for the increase of the regular army and navy and for the almost unlimited enlistment of volunteers. Congress had assembled on the 4th of July, in a most liberal and patriotic state of mind, with the exception of a mere squad of timid temporizers and another of open sympathizers with Secession. Nevertheless there had been much criticism of the Administration in both branches of the legislative body, with some loud-toned "On to Richmond" oratory, and also a general industry in obtaining the appointment of constituents to office which had interfered sadly with the performance of strictly legislative functions. Very few men, in either House or Senate, had yet discovered the fact that Mr. Lincoln was, and for some busy months had been, the Dictator of a Republic struggling for its very life. It did not fully dawn upon them until the day when they suddenly awoke to the conviction that they themselves eagerly desired him to be so and were ready to put into his hands all the dictatorial powers they knew how to give him, and then hasten home.

The message the President sent to Congress upon its assembling was a remarkable document. It began with a condensed historical sketch of the rise of the Rebellion and of its progress to that date. It carefully summed up and presented the great fact, so carefully left unshaken by his own course from the beginning, that the Rebels and not the National Government had forced upon the country the one distinct issue, "immediate dissolution or blood." It showed that they had followed this

forcing by practical dissolution, so far as that was in their power, and by drawing the first blood themselves.

This issue, so presented, the message then contended, was not all which was at stake in the conflict thus ruthlessly precipitated. It said: "And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic or democracy, a government of the people by the same people, -can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in number to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their government, and thus put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask, 'Is there in all republics this inherent and fatal weakness?' 'Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people or too weak to maintain its own existence?""

These questions presented the precise view of the case held by European statesmen, and they had often and openly declared their belief that, whenever such a question should be asked by the logic of actual events, the answer would be given in the affirmative and the republic or democracy involved would at once go to pieces. As to the American Republic, the issue was now plainly set before the whole world by the man who was more serenely confident than almost any other that such answer would be given as should assure all future thinkers of the stability of all free governments, provided these were bravely maintained by the men in charge of them.

Mr. Lincoln's message dealt briefly but sharply with certain absurd ideas of possible "neutrality" which were employed at the time in Kentucky as a convenient cloak for cowardice and treason. He defended his course in the arbitrary suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. He then advised that Congress,

in the hope of making the war a short one, should place at the disposal of the government four hundred thousand men and four hundred millions of dollars.

These were large figures, and they almost took away the breath of some who heard them; but the members of the body to whom the message was addressed had been doing the requisite amount of thinking, during the eighty days which had passed since the President's proclamation summoned them together. They did what they would surely not have done if they had been gathered too hastily. They voted half a mil lion of men and five hundred millions of dollars, in a burst of eager patriotism.

Even Mr. Lincoln had almost a hope, at first, that this might prove sufficient. It might well have been so if the half mil lion of men had at that hour been soldiers, and if these had been under officers, great and small, such as the course of the war, with Mr. Lincoln's watchful help, afterwards selected from among the long list of then untried, unknown, altogether undiscovered and undeveloped heroes.

The message concluded with an exhaustive analysis of the stupidities and absurdities of the old doctrine of "State rights" as now applied to the war purposes of the Rebellion. Such an argument was timely, both for home and forcign reading. It was intended for both, as was also much of the earlier matter of the message.

Congress passed the necessary acts to legalize whatever Mr. Lincoln had seen fit to do. Its leadership was in the hands of strong, hard-headed, resolute men, fresh from hearing the voices of their angry constituents, male and female, and not a little very martial music of other descriptions. The protests of the disloyal members were loud and bitter, but small attention was paid them. The minority vote against the measures sustaining the government contained the names of several men who afterwards accepted commissions in the Rebel army, and of one, Vallandigham of Ohio, who was afterwards contemptu

ously sent across the lines into the Confederacy, "because he belonged there."

Into such a body as this Congress, busily engaged in so good a work and in the discussion of its details, the news of the defeat at Bull Run fell like a bursting bombshell. It was an explosion which put an end to useless debate and blew to atoms the last vestige of hesitation as to the necessities of the case. All remaining business was finished in exactly two weeks, furnishing perhaps the most remarkable instance on record of legislation condensed under pressure. Congress adjourned and went home, leaving Mr. Lincoln at Washington as sole dictator, endowed for the first time with full forms of law for the carrying on of the war.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE BLOCKADE.

Recognition-Accepting the Situation-The Neutrality Mask-Rejected Information-War Correspondence not History-The Fetters of Etiquette not Worn.

MR. LINCOLN carefully abstained from coming into open collision with any State government acting as such. In public and in private he recognized the assailants of the national integrity only as criminal individuals. He treated the Confederacy simply as the same men acting together in an organized body for the same essentially criminal purposes. He insisted that, as no power existed anywhere for the dissolution of the Union without the assent of all concerned or a majority of them, it had not been dissolved. A different view was conveniently taken for political purposes on the other side of the Atlantic. England and France did not even wait for the complete formation of the Confederacy before they made haste to recognize it as a "belligerent" and to treat it as in some sort one of the nations of the earth. "The South," as they commonly called it, had yet no navy, but its admirers hoped and believed that the deficiency would soon be supplied.

The North, they were yet more sure, was unable to send to sea a fleet capable of coping with any one of their cruising squadrons. It had neither ships nor money nor credit, and it was so far disorganized that it was not likely to obtain either at an early day. It was to their minds merely a question of time, indeed, into how many fragments, of what shapes, the offensive republic should fall.

The motion towards recognition was met by a prompt and