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of zouaves from the Chicago firemen, and had delighted and astonished many people by the exhibitions of their skill in the evolutions through which they were put while visiting some of the chief cities of the republic. Now, being commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the United States army, he went to New York and organized a similar regiment, known as the Eleventh New York, from the firemen of that city. Colonel Ellsworth's Zouaves, on the evening of May 23d, were sent with a considerable force to occupy the heights overlooking Washington and Alexandria, on the banks of the Potomac, opposite the national capital. Next day, seeing a rebel flag flying from the Marshall House, a tavern in Alexandria, kept by a secessionist, he went up through the building to the roof and pulled it down. While on his way down the stairs, with the flag in his arms, he was met by the tavern-keeper, who shot and killed him instantly. Ellsworth fell, dyeing the rebel flag with the blood that gushed from his heart. The tavern-keeper was instantly killed by a shot from private Brownell, of the Ellsworth Zouaves, who was at hand when his commander fell. The death of Ellsworth, needless though it may have been, caused a profound sensation throughout the country, where he was well known. He was among the very first martyrs of the war, as he had been one of the first volunteers. Lincoln was overwhelmed with sorrow. He had the body of the lamented young officer taken to the White House, where it lay in state until the burial took place, and, even in the midst of his increasing cares, he found time to sit alone and in

grief-stricken meditation by the bier of the dead young soldier of whose career he had cherished so great hopes. The life-blood from Ellsworth's heart had stained not only the rebel flag, but a gold medal found under his uniform, bearing the legend "Non solum nobis, sed pro patria": "Not for ourselves alone, but for the country."

On the third of June, died Stephen Arnold Douglas, after a few days of illness. On the fourteenth of April, in company with a friend, he had called upon Lincoln at the White House, to offer his sympathy and advice. The country was ablaze with excitement. Fort Sumter had been fired on, and, even as these two eminent men sat together in council-Lincoln and Douglas, former foes in politics now united in a common purpose-the tramp of armed men, on the way to the front, was beginning to be heard. Douglas warmly, and even affectionately, commended the course pursued by Lincoln up to that time, although he said he would have called for two hundred thousand men instead of seventy-five thousand, if he were in the President's place. Warmed by his unmistakable devotion to his country, Douglas enlarged upon the theme and gave Lincoln many suggestions of practical value. After the interview had closed and Douglas had departed, the gentlemen with him asked that the details of the notable meeting be sketched in the form of a despatch and given to the country, in the belief that the loyal sentiment would be thereby strengthened. This was done, and the despatch, having been read and approved by Douglas, was transmitted through the Associated Press Agency at Wash

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ington, with precisely the effect upon the people that was expected of it. During the following month, Douglas addressed large meetings of Union men in Ohio and Illinois, urging such measures as would strengthen the hands of those who were carrying on the government of the republic. Towards the later part of May he sickened, and died, as before said, June 3d, greatly lamented by his fellow-countrymen, among whom the sad-hearted Lincoln mourned with a great and exceeding sorrow.

The Combatants Face to Face-The First Battle of Bull Run-The Sting of Defeat-George B. McClellan—Effect of the Great Disaster—A Message to Congress-Men and Money Voted-How Foreign Nations Regarded the Struggle-Seizure and Release of Mason and Slidell.

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T last, then, freedom and union, for which Lincoln had so long and so zealously contended, stood to defend itself against slavery and disunion. The arena was transferred from the West to the wider plane of the republic. Jefferson Davis, a man of high culture, educated at the Military Academy of the United States, familiar with high politics and conversant with persons of social dignity, himself an aristocrat, was now pitted against the man who had been born in the obscurity of the American backwoods, reared in a life of poverty and privation, educated by dint of hard struggles and under unfriendly circumstances, and coming late into the possession of those advantages, social and mental, which are denied to the children of adversity. Davis and his followers had set up the plea that a State was sovereign, that the Union was subject to the State, and that the rights of any single State were paramount to all others

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that could be considered by the citizens thereof. Lincoln, on the other hand, had always insisted that the nation, composed of the people of the several States, was the paramount authority. He held that no State could leave the Union and, by so leaving, break it up and dissolve the bond, without being committed thereby to an act of treason. One of his familiar illustrations of this his position was that as a county, a political subdivision of a State, could not lawfully leave that State, so an individual State could not lawfully leave the republic of States, thereby coercing a dissolution of that republic. What Davis would have done, if, after the so-called confederacy had been established, some one State should have seceded from it, was never clearly understood. This advocate of State rights never had a good opportunity of showing how he would have wrestled with that problem.

When these two hostile camps, freedom and slavery, were pitched against each other, in the summer of 1861, the population of the States in rebellion was 9,103,333, of which more than one third were slaves. The population of the loyal and free States was 22,046,472. This disparity in the number liable to be drawn into battle attracted the attention of the rebel leaders, and it excited the alarm of some of those who were likely to be called on to fight for the confederacy. These timorous persons were cheered by the common remark that one Southern man was equal to at least five "Yankees" of the North, a saying that undoubtedly helped many young and inexperienced recruits to bear the early burdens of the civil war, as the