From photograph in the collection of H. W. Fay of De Kalb, Illinois, taken probably in Springfield early in 1861. It is supposed to have been the first, or at least one of the first, portraits made of Mr. Lincoln after he began to wear a beard. As is well known, his face was smooth until about the end of 1860; when he first allowed his beard to grow, it became a topic of newspaper comment, and even of caricature.

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necessary than to defend Washington. When, on April 15, Mr. Lincoln called for 75,000 men for three months, he had commanded the persons disturbing the public peace to disperse and retire peacefully to their respective abodes within twenty days from date."

In reply the South had marched on his Capital, cutting it off from all communication with the North for nearly a week, and had so threatened Harper's Ferry and Norfolk that to prevent the arsenal and shipyards from falling into the hands of the enemy, the Federal commanders had destroyed both these fine government properties.

Before ten of the twenty days had passed, it was plain that the order was worthless.

"I have desired as sincerely as any man, and I sometimes think more than any other man," said the President on April 27 to a visiting military company, "that our present difficulties might be settled without the shedding of blood. I will not say that all hope has yet gone; but if the alternative is presented whether the Union is to be broken in fragments and the liberties of the people lost, or blood be shed, you will probably make the choice with which I shall not be dissatisfied."

If not as yet quite convinced that war was coming, Mr. Lincoln saw that it was so probable that he must have an army of something beside "three months' men," for the very next day after this speech, the Secretary of War, Mr. Cameron, wrote to a correspondent that the President had decided to add twenty-five regiments to the regular army.

There was great need that the regular army be re-enforced. At the beginning of the year it had numbered 16,367 men, but a large part of this force was in the West, and the efficiency of the whole was greatly weakened by the desertion of officers to the South, 313 of the commissioned officers, nearly one-third of the whole number, having resigned. To

Mr. Lincoln's great satisfaction, this disaffection did not extend to the common soldiers and common sailors." "To the last man, so far as is known," he said proudly, "they have successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose commands, but an hour before, they obeyed as absolute law." It was on May 3 that the President issued a proclamation increasing the regulars by 22,714, and calling for three years' volunteers to the number of 42,034. But the country was not satisfied to send so few. When the War Department refused troops from States beyond the quota assigned, Governors literally begged that they be allowed to send more.

"You have no conception of the depth of feeling universal in the Northern mind for the prosecution of this war until the flag floats from every spot on which it had a right to float a year ago," wrote Galusha A. Grow, on May 5.

In my judgment, the enthusiasm of the hour ought not to be represented by flat refusals on the part of the government, but let them (troops offered above the quota) be held in readiness (in some way) in the States."

A meeting of the Governors of the Western and Border States was held in Cleveland, Ohio, about the time of the second call, and Mr. Randall, the Governor of Wisconsin, wrote to Lincoln on May 6:

"I must be permitted to say it, because it is a fact, there is a spirit evoked by this rebellion among the liberty-loving people of the country that is driving them to action, and if the government will not permit them to act for it, they will act for themselves. It is better for the government to direct this spirit than to let it run wild. . . . If it was absolutely certain that the 75,000 troops first called would wipe out this rebellion in three weeks from to-day, it would still be the policy of your Administration, and for the best interest of the government, in view of what ought to be the

great future of this nation, to call into the field at once 300,000 men."

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At the same time from Maine W. P. Fessenden wrote: 'Rely upon it, you cannot at Washington fairly estimate the resolute determination existing among all classes of people in the free States to put down at once and forever this monstrous rebellion."

Under this pressure, regiment after regiment was added to the three years' volunteers. It was Mr. Lincoln's personal interference which brought in many of these regiments.

Why cannot Colonel Small's Philadelphia regiment be received?" he wrote to the Secretary of War on May 21, "I sincerely wish it could. There is something strange about it. Give those gentlemen an interview, and take their regiment." Again on June 13 he wrote: "There is, it seems, a regiment in Massachusetts commanded by Fletcher Webster, and which the Hon. Daniel Webster's old friends very much wish to get into the service. If it can be received with the approval of your department and the consent of the Governor of Massachusetts, I shall indeed be much gratified. Give Mr. Ashmun a chance to explain fully." And again on June 17: "With your concurrence, and that of the Governor of Indiana, I am in favor of accepting into what we call the three years' service any number not exceeding four additional regiments from that State. Probably they should come from the triangular region between the Ohio and Wabash rivers, including my own old boyhood home."*

So rapid was the increase of the army under this policy, that on July 1, the Secretary of War reported 310,000 men at his command, and added: "At the present moment the government presents the striking anomaly of being em

*These extracts are from letters to Mr. Cameron found in a volume of the War Records as yet unpublished. Others of the same tenor are in the volume.