From the first, nevertheless, all efforts were made to avoid unnecessary interferences with vested rights or the well-being of individuals. Mr. Lincoln's own personal characteristics came to the front in this connection. A large part of his daily annoyances came to him on account of his kindly inability to turn a deaf ear to a story of suffering or injustice. Any power he at any time assumed or exercised was taken not to himself at all. It was but a means applied to a manifest use, and, so far as he could determine, the best and most righteous means for the best and most righteous use. He toiled patiently and unselfishly. In such a multiplicity of duties his mind knew no rest, turning hourly from one branch of his responsibilities to another. He grappled resolutely with every problem put to him by his needs for action, foreign or domestic. It seems clear to those who knew him best that he himself perceived, as did many of his nearer observers, the swift and steady growth of his own capacities as a ruler of men. His inner life expanded under the intense heat of his trials. The strength of his will, the iron resolution which lay behind his easy-mannered kindliness, had been manifested day by day from his very childhood; but the world contains a multitude of strongwilled, resolute, able, successful men not one of whom contains the rare material whereof a Revolution may construct for its needs a competent Ruler.

The times were testing him in many ways. Weaker men, often more brilliant in many expressions of capacity, began to come frequently into what resembled collisions with him. It was all but amusing, now and then, to witness their surprise at their own helplessness in such trials of their strength as had not called upon him for conscious exertion, just as in the early days he had quietly held out at arm's length the burly wrestler from Clary's Grove.

He was now about to enter upon the most prolonged and perplexing of these collisions, and the only one which at any time seemed to present elements of public peril. His course

in the management of all minor difficulties may be rationally gathered or imagined after obtaining a fair understanding of the first struggle between "military authority" and "civil supremacy."

CHAPTER XXXVI.

PRESIDENT AND GENERAL.

The Army of the Potomac-Newspaper Acrobats-The President's MailWork of the Private Secretaries-Army Organization-An Advance which was Not Made-Offensive and Defensive War.

THE routine of Mr. Lincoln's office-work, during this first summer and autumn, as afterwards, was varied by occasional visits to the camps and forts, where he was always welcomed with enthusiasm. The personal attachment for him among the rank and file of the army grew faster and became stronger than his critics and enemies were at all willing to believe.

His evenings at home were also varied now not unfrequently by visits at the house of the general in command of the Army of the Potomace, when McClellan happened to be in the city. The President's course and personal relations with him for a time were, as nearly as might be, those of a confiding and familiar friend. The entire mass of the written correspondence between them bears witness to such a state of things. In the eyes of Mr. Lincoln's nearest advisers he seemed even too indifferent to all rules of military etiquette, and also to a very apparent assumption and arrogance in act and manner on the part of his brilliant subordinate. These were as yet of minor consequence, and the main thing, after all, was that the work in hand should be done.

There were great things going on in those days in the West and elsewhere; and of these we shall take due note farther on. But at the present juncture we have to do with matters which then chiefly engaged Mr. Lincoln's attention, and that

of the country at large throughout the Atlantic States. To the minds of people at Washington the Army of the Potomac was the Army of the United States. It was very important, certainly; and its splendid commander with his glittering staff dashing through the streets like a small earthquake-in-newuniform were a wonder which must, men thought, dazzle the eyes of all the millions who were not there to see. The country at large was but moderately dazzled, and the President not at all. He knew that the area of the war extended beyond the picket-lines of that one army, for he was watching the swift fluctuations of success and disaster to the farthest frontier. He was also studying the rapid changes of thought and purpose among the people, and knew what a continual battle there was in the souls of men and women all over the North. He grew more and more absorbed in his work and more difficult of approach upon any but needful business.

Nevertheless it was during these months that he almost entirely gave up any attempt at reading the newspapers. He at one time instructed one of his private secretaries to make a daily digest of the attitude of the leading journals as editorially expressed.

It was actually so done for about a week. The President glanced at the digest once or twice, during that time, but he discovered how little he really cared for it all, and told the young man to return to more useful work. There were too many sudden "revolutions," perhaps, in the attitudes assumed by the journalists, while there was really but one with which he or the people had anything to do.

The mail of the Executive Mansion, always large, had now grown to a volume which was, probably, not afterwards increased. Its very size shut out all probability of its examination by Mr. Lincoln himself. Counting packages of documents as one "letter," the number of letters of all kinds varied from two hundred to two hundred and fifty each day. The range of subjects treated by the writers was about as wide as

the human imagination. It is possible that three per cent of these communications, including subsequent references, were at some time seen by the President. About half were sure to relate to business belonging to bureaus of the several executive departments and were at once forwarded to the proper places. The other half might contain a few which required filing in the President's own office for reference. The secretary's wastebasket received the mass remaining, of advice, abuse, fault-finding, insanity, egotism, and threats of personal violence. A careful estimate shows that of all the letters sent by mail to Mr. Lincoln, at this time, he saw and read, at the time of their arrival, about one in a hundred: less rather than more. The fact illustrates forcibly the absorption of his mind and the pressure upon his time and energies, for it had been his lifelong habit to examine with care every paper that came to him from any source, however humble. Even when some epistle of uncommon importance prompted the secretary in charge to urge its contents upon him, the response was sure to be, "Well, what is it?" and a digest in brief was expected unless the letter itself were of the briefest.

With the more persistently intrusive official and legislative multitude it was not possible to deal in a similar way. It was out of the question to put the most selfish of men into a waste-basket, nor was it easy to transfer such a person to his proper bureau. Nevertheless, the secretaries in charge of the matter did succeed in performing, for the throngs of callers, a process analogous in some of its results to that employed upon the mails.

Mr. Lincoln's time and strength were saved for him to the extent of their very good ability, and they protected him from untold annoyances. It was a good while before the President's patience gave way and he came, at last, to their assistance. Embodied pertinacities would succeed in getting in their "cards" and securing interviews to which they were not entitled.

Very much this state of things continued, to the end. Time