them and sell them and at the same time forever to divide and cripple the growing and dangerous power of the United States. Here, all the while before their eyes, was the stern alternative presented by Mr. Seward.

They decided that they would not exactly "recognize" and so at once bring on hostilities. The government of Great Britain first discovered a sort of solution. It sought to dodge, beg, and circumvent the entire difficulty by solemnly declaring itself "neutral" between two morally equal and belligerent parties, into which it assumed the American Republic to be divided.

There was something painfully ludicrous about such a position, but for the tremendous consequences immediately threatened by it and the miseries and wastes which were actually resultant. The manner in which it was received at Washington reads now singularly like a bit of dry, grim humor, officially perpetrated by Mr. Seward at Mr. Lincoln's suggestion.

On the 15th of June the representatives of England and France at Washington asked Mr. Seward for the privilege of reading to him officially certain fresh instructions sent to them by their respective governments. Mr. Seward politely declined to listen until he should first "unofficially" have read the proffered papers by himself that he might know what they were. He was permitted to examine the suspicious instructions, therefore, privately. Having done so, and having consulted Mr. Lincoln, he refused to know or to be "officially" informed what there was in them. He was two men for that occasion, and Mr. Seward was too wise to let the Secretary of State take official notice of documents which formally set forth the entire doctrine of "neutrality." Fresh instructions, however, were at once forwarded to Mr. Adams and our other representatives abroad.

As a result of this mingling of prudence and firmness, Rebel sympathy in Europe was left with no other way of expressing itself but to arm and send out the Alabama and like piratical

craft, and to build swift steamers in which to "run the blockade" of the Southern Atlantic seaports. The general disposition to do these things received a tremendous impulse from the battle of Bull Run.

The true character of this engagement was wildly travestied for foreign consumption by an English "war-correspondent" by the name of Russell, who saw none of the hard fighting and a good deal of the disorganized militia whose mob of fugitives interfered with his own panic-stricken race from the supposed approach of danger. It is a curious fact that to this day the accounts written by such men on the spur of the moment, in great excitement, without any possible means of obtaining correct information, are accepted widely as "history," while the contrary statements of commanding generals and other competent authorities, on both sides, are unread or disbelieved.

Conferences between Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln were almost of daily occurrence, and the iron hand discernible in the conduct of our foreign affairs was not solely that of the shrewd and able head of the State Department. These conferences were generally held at the White House, to and from which Mr. Seward went and came with the easy familiarity of a household intimate rather than with any observance of useless etiquette. It was not at all uncommon, however, for Mr. Lincoln to walk over to the State Department, in the daytime, or to Mr. Seward's house, in the evening, with or without an attending private secretary to carry papers. On the whole, he generally preferred to go alone, as he would have done formerly in the transaction of private business at Springfield. It was the business itself, and that only, with which he burdened his mind. It is to be doubted if either he or Mr. Seward ever wasted a thought upon their purely personal methods of doing their work.

Then and afterwards a similar freedom marked the intercourse of the President with the other members of his Cabinet,

and yet a close observer would not have failed to perceive such differences, finely but unconsciously graded and marked, as each man's personal character and uses indicated or demanded.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

WORK WITH RAW MATERIALS.

The New Army-Hunting for Brigadiers-Finances-Preparations of the South-Old Guns and New-Presidential Target-Practice-Selection of General McClellan.

WHEN Congress adjourned on the 6th of August, 1861, there was a strong feeling in the minds of its membership, and throughout the country among all men, that to "the Government," meaning by that word, very distinctly, Abraham Lincoln, the President, had been given all that it or he could ask for, and that the war ought, in all reason, to be made a short

one.

A great deal had been given, truly. Every day that passed saw some fresh regiment of enthusiastic volunteers marching, with more or less of regularity in their lines, through the streets of Washington, or into one of the several designated camps of the West and Center. Five hundred thousand men had been voted, and five hundred millions of money. That was a great deal. Men enough to overrun the whole Confederacy, and money enough to pay their expenses. Great things were expected of the President, but no other man living knew so well as he did the marvelous differences between the good "voting" done by the national legislature and the long results of it which had been left for him to realize.

Up to the date of the passage of the Act by which Mr. Lincoln was authorized to accept the services of volunteers, about three hundred thousand men had offered themselves and had been, for the greater part, promptly accepted. They had also been put into training, as efficiently as might be, in such a

famine of military teachers, for the purpose of turning them into soldiers. Quite a large force was already in actual service, but the new law was nevertheless a good thing to have and work under, and the business of recruiting new regiments went forward with great energy.

The organization of such an army presented difficult problems in abundance; but these were met and seized and solved with a sagacity and patience which appears more wonderful as the years go by. The very organic structure of the country, politically, created peculiar features of the situation, and these were not altogether detrimental. The appointments to offices of every grade in the regular army, in all its branches, were in the sole control of the President. It was not so with the volunteers, for these, in a curiously complex way, were still regarded as "State troops," although in the national service. Their regiments were named and numbered as of the several States wherein they were recruited, and all their regimental officers were chosen and commissioned under the laws of the same States. Mr. Lincoln could not appoint so much as a second-lieutenant in a regiment of volunteer infantry. There is one instance recorded of a cavalry regiment from New York reduced to one half its original strength and having lost all its commissioned officers in one way and another, until it was in command of the orderly sergeant of one of its companies. It was necessary to apply to the Governor of New York for a commission for that sergeant as a second-lieutenant, and he passed the succeeding grades to that of major in a few weeks. from the date of his first promotion. With the grade of "colonel" the State appointing power terminated and that of the Commander-in-Chief began. With it also began the all but insurmountable difficulties in the way of making even reasonably good selections of "general officers." Much could be done by the employment of graduates of the West Point military school, reappearing now from their long retirements in civil occupations. The regular army itself furnished much good material,