"This is our own affair," he said, in effect. "It is a family quarrel with which foreign nations have nothing to do, and they must let it alone."

The practical details of the processes by which that doctrine was to be communicated to European powers were left almost altogether to the care of Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State. They could not have been intrusted to a brain more capable or to a heart more utterly worthy of the momentous trust. There was little need for Mr. Lincoln to add the State Department to his other burdens while its management was under such an eye and hand as those of the practised New York statesman. Here, at least, there was something in the nature of complete relief, and the weary ruler accepted it as frankly as it was given. The friendship between him and his "minister of foreign affairs," from the very first, assumed a warm and personal character. The gossips who strove to give it any other significance, then or afterwards, did but testify their incapacity to understand the broad patriotism and generous mutual confidence of .these two men.

In training, as in natural gifts, Mr. Seward was as unlike Mr. Lincoln as he well could be; but they had one thing in common and one tie of measureless brotherhood in their unselfish devotion to the performance of the great work which God had laid upon them. If, at first, they were a little slow, Mr. Seward somewhat the slower, in coming to a mutual understanding of each other's character, aim, and purpose, that was all the more surely attained in the course of joint toil and counsel and anxiety. Together, each in his appointed place, they labored in harmony to the end.

It was well known that one of the first acts of Mr. Davis, on assuming the reins of power, had been to dispatch emissaries to the more important courts of Europe, notably to those of England and France. Much preliminary work, of a preparatory kind, had before that time been accomplished by the unofficial agents of the intended rebellion. A strong feeling of

In

sympathy for the South had been most skillfully created. Europe, as in America, the "War" had been in progress for months before Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. Up to the close of the Buchanan Administration the cause of the South had been vigorously served abroad, in not a few instances, by the official and accredited representatives of the National Government at Washington.

It was difficult, at first, for foreign diplomacy to find a place for the insertion of an entering wedge of interference. The stern directness of Mr. Lincoln's own policy was shortly to offer one, in such a shape as should present the most tempting bait and with it the most trying problem. As early as the 17th of April, 1861, three days after the surrender of Fort Sumter, Mr. Davis issued a proclamation offering "letters of marque and reprisal," under the seal of the Confederate States, to armed privateers of all nations.

It was truly a tempting offer to the supposable pirates of Europe, but it was rendered somewhat less so, in about fortyeight hours, by the counter-proclamation of President Lincoln. This document contained a deal of salutary warning and had a most beneficial effect. It notified the "privateers" invited by Mr. Davis that they would be "held amenable to the laws of the United States for the prevention and punishment of piracy."

This declaration was in strict accordance with the more recent utterances of the great commercial powers and with the treaties they had mutually entered into. At the same time a rigid blockade was declared of all the ports of the States then included in the Confederacy. Those of Virginia and North Carolina were added in due time.

The most vigorous efforts were made to render the blockade effective. Ships were fitted out and put to sea even more rapidly than regiments on land were raised and equipped. The new navy of the United States was in the active performance of its sudden duties before the first company of skirmishers marched across the Long Bridge.

He

Of naval affairs, as such, Mr. Lincoln knew but little. 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 armymovements 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