responded nobly to every call. Still it was true that no such army, or any army at all, would then have been upon the Potomac if the President had awaited the action of States and governors and legislators. The organization of both army and navy had, in his mind, preceded the fall of Sumter, and the Army of the Potomac found its nucleus in the regular and volunteer recruits he began to gather in the last weeks of April, 1861. But for this nucleus the subsequent "army" would have formed, if at all, elsewhere than on the line of the Potomac.

The reports of General McClellan show that 50,000 men were prepared for field-duty during each consecutive thirty days, from July 27 to October 27. The South had been at work longer and had accomplished less, because its equally efficient subordinates had a less competent head to direct and sustain them. That this was true was made less important from the technically defensive nature of the war to be carried on by them and the character of the areas to be defended. For Southern purposes, except as to the numbers arrayed for any one encounter, every hundred men they could raise and equip at home was an offset to three hundred of the far distant Northern recruits; for, the value of individual soldiers being equal, the longer the march of a Union army to a battle-field, the more was its likelihood of being outnumbered when it arrived.

The Confederates, therefore, had men enough. The "Copperheads" of the North were useful allies to them at all times. Europe aided them in many ways. Even the stormy zeal of impatient patriots in the free States sometimes fought for them. They found help of some kind at every turn. They found an unintentional but extraordinary co-operation in the prolonged idleness of the Army of the Potomac. It is not too much to say that, in the early fall of 1861, Mr. Lincoln seemed to have a splendid army at his disposal, but was compelled to waste the months until spring in obtaining the adoption of digested

plans for its employment. The result was that, at the last, the army was in no better condition for actual service; the plans finally acted upon were fragmentary and incomplete; time and money and much precious human life had been thrown away; and the campaign which followed did but crown the mournful record with the fruits of hesitation, in disaster and discourage ment.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

DICTATOR AND CONGRESS.

The Legislative Branch-The Committee on the Conduct of the WarUseful Interference-Councils and Umpires-Political Complications Beginning-Civilian and Soldier.

THE position of President Lincoln in the year 1862 cannot be studied advantageously without a glance at his relations to the National Legislature which assembled at Washington in the winter.

Congress came together with the majority of its membership in a red heat of patriotism. There was a minority, indeed, and the material for an "opposition," but only a very few ultraists cared to be known as anti-war men. Omitting the extreme Copperheads, every member was under a sort of triple pressure:-of his own ideas as to the prosecution of the war; of a knowledge of the feverish eagerness of his constituents for the suppression of the Rebellion; and of the even greater eagerness of a persistent fraction of that same constituency to obtain civil or military offices under the general government.

There were, indeed, a great many offices to be given, and these were all nominally at the disposal of Mr. Lincoln. He had a vast amount of trouble in avoiding the onerous responsibility of giving that wide business his personal attention. He succeeded fairly well, but could not escape altogether. He drily remarked of it all that there were twenty applicants for each office, and every time he filled one he made twenty enemies. The nineteen were enemies because they were disappointed, and the man appointed hated him because he

thought he ought to have a better place or because he was indebted for it to some other man.

As a body, Congress was profoundly ignorant of the Dictatorship, although a few voices made bold to denounce it. The idea prevailed that the government had traveled thus far by virtue of the work done during the hasty summer session of 1861. The President had obeyed and followed very well, but must now be again taken in hand a little. It was not long before the "Legislative Branch" of the government began to interfere with the "Executive Branch" in military matters. It was a little more patriotic than constitutional, but Mr. Lincoln had no manner of objection. When, in December, 1861, Congress appointed a strong and capable "Committee on the Conduct of the War," its members were at once taken into hearty and intimate consultation. What would surely have been a peril or a hindrance to a weak or a selfish ruler was transformed at once into an additional and powerful guaranty of Congressional co-operation. It was not so much, thenceforward, that Congress had assumed a part of the Executive province, but that the Executive had deftly provided himself with personal and official representatives upon the floor of Senate and House.

This Committee, constantly advised with, cordially invited to investigate, to consider, to come and to go, and to know everything before it happened, became a priceless safety-valve for the growing discontent over inexplicable delays. Without it, there can now be little question that Mr. Lincoln would have been more seriously misunderstood and even antagonized by the body of men nominally represented by the committee.

The President of the United States is Constitutionally the Commander-in-Chief, and Abraham Lincoln was also actually Dictator; but he was entirely at ease as to all his rights and dignities when a joint committee of Senators and Representatives freely summoned before them his military officers, by the dozen, and called for their views of things in general and their

professional opinions of battles and campaigns. He knew beforehand that the sure result would be the strong and unanimous sympathy of that "jury" of clear-headed men, with him personally, and their approval of the general outlines of his policy, however much they might disagree among themselves or with him as to details of specific operations. In the long run it turned out as he expected.

Congress had appointed seven of its best men to find fault with the President, and grumble at him, and agree with him, and help him; and to help the nation stand by him more firmly than ever. Changed in its membership somewhat, as time went on, the Committee continued its services to the end of the war. Never at any time were they of greater utility than in their close and searching study of the condition of the army and the causes of its inaction during the long trial of that memorable winter. At the same time, their personal pressure, and that of Congress exerted upon Mr. Lincoln through them, was an additional burden of no insignificant weight.

It is now very easy to perceive that if the President had at once assumed the full exercise of his nominal powers as Commander-in-Chief, forcing a reluctant general and his minor generals to a course of action for which they avowed themselves unprepared, the results could hardly have been other than disastrous. The President fully understood this feature of his responsibilities, and it was forcibly dwelt upon by his civil and military advisers. It was also true that the latter held erroneous ideas of the Rebel forces opposed to them, and magnified less than fifty thousand effective men into a hundred and fifteen thousand in their official estimates; but Mr. Lincoln had no trustworthy means of refuting the error. He believed it to be one, but was compelled to submit to its effects as patiently as the circumstances permitted. He did so, but even his tough patience wore slowly away, as has been related, and at last became altogether exhausted.

It has been said and printed that he "disclaimed all military