and cares not how much trouble he leaves on the next Administration, will not give his consent. We are not personally alarmed, because we are in the line of our duty, and that is the safest place."

The editor's one letter of this winter to the Register recommends the choice of postmasters in his district, in case of a scramble by an election. This advice was generally adopted. Still he was half crazed by the rush for office. Three months before Lincoln's inauguration he wrote: "Letters pour in by the hundreds-you can imagine what for-not from Indiana alone, but from all over. Blank wants to be postmaster at Blank, although it is a town of eight thousand inhabitants, and he lives ten miles out in the country; says he must have it; and so on all through." And two weeks after the inauguration he writes his mother: "It makes me heart-sick. All over the country our party are by the ears, fighting over offices worth one hundred to five hundred dollars. My district, except at La Porte, Michigan City, Valparaiso, and Logansport, gets along better, but it is awful at each of these places. And in New York even, had I the power, I could officer the whole Custom-House from my own correspondence." This was a new experience.' Hitherto his candidates for President had been beaten. The dispensing of office seems to be the bete noir of popular leaders. Still, the dispenser of office has much the best of the seeker for office, and perhaps the latter is the more deserving of sympathy. It may be supposed, at all events, that Mr. Colfax became accustomed to it in time, and that it ceased to worry him.

1. Political doctrinaires had not then discovered a way in which the Representatives of the people, and even the Chief Executive, might shirk a very important part of their duties-namely, by referring applicants for office to a board of examiners,

CHAPTER VI.

THIRTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS.

1861-1863.

LINCOLN INAUGURATED.-COLFAX GENERALLY COMMENDED FOR POSTMASTER-GENERAL.-CIVIL WAR, SPECIAL SESSION.-CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEE ON POST-OFFICES AND POST-ROADS.-HIS STANDING IN THIS CONgress.-DefENCE OF FREMONT.-FAVORS CONFISCATION ACT.-REFORMS IN THE POSTAL SERVICE.-WAR IN EARNEST.-ReNOMINATED, RECRUITING, CANVASS AGAINST TURPIE. BARELY ELECTED, CONGRATULATIONS.-DISCOURAGEMENT IN THE COUNTRY. -FAVORS THE ADMISSION of West VirGINIA.-FIRE IN THE REAR.— ANSWER OF CONGRESS.-CODIFICATION OF THE POSTAL LAWS.

MUCH against his inclination, but in deference to wellfounded advice, the President-elect passed through Baltimore en route to the National Capital in the night, and partly disguised. He was inaugurated without mishap, Mr. Douglas, the choice of one third of the people for President, standing at his side, actually holding his hat during the ceremony. His inaugural address prefigured a firm yet patient policy; his Cabinet contained all his competitors for the chief magistracy, presumably the strongest men in the country.

An unusually strong and widespread demonstration had been made in favor of Mr. Colfax for the place of Postmaster-General.' He was commended by the Legislatures and Governors of nearly every Northern and Border State; by many Congressional delegations and Presidential Electors; unanimously by the publishers of the

1. It had been canvassed since the nominations. "I see you talk about the Postmaster-Generalship," he writes his mother in June, 1860. "Members of all parties talk about it, and many seem to regard it as a settled thing if we win. I do not, however. It is too big a step for one stride, and besides, I don't know Mr. Lincoln personally, although we correspond."

great Eastern cities; and very generally by the press. Mr. Lincoln called the Hon. Caleb B. Smith, also of Indiana, into his Cabinet, instead of Colfax. Mr. Smith was an old Whig, who had been strongly supported for Postmaster-General twelve years previously, when President Taylor was inaugurated. Failing to receive the appointment, he had gone out of politics and out of the State, and was now but recently returned. He and Lincoln had been intimate during their service in the Twenty-ninth Congress. He was at the Chicago Convention, seconded Lincoln's nomination, and used his influence to bring Indiana to the support of Lincoln. On the other hand, Colfax had supported Bates against Lincoln, and his friend Greeley had helped to defeat Lincoln for the Illinois Senatorship in 1858. The Republicans had carried the Legislature of Indiana, and the State had a seat in the United States Senate to bestow at that time, for which Caleb B. Smith and Henry S. Lane, the Governor-elect, were candidates. If Smith went into the Cabinet Lane would get the Senatorship, and Lieutenant-Governor-elect Morton would be Governor. All of these men, inclusive of Smith, were warm friends of Colfax, but their own advancement was paramount; and so Smith had strong support from Colfax's own State. Mr. Lincoln subsequently wrote Colfax as follows: "I had partly made up my mind in favor of Mr. Smith, not conclusively of course, before your name was mentioned in that connection. When you were brought forward, I said: Colfax is a young man, is already in position, is running a brilliant career, and is sure of a bright future in any event. With Smith it is now or never.' I considered either abundantly competent, and decided on the ground I have stated."

Major Anderson, left to his own discretion in Charleston Harbor by President Buchanan, had evacuated Fort Moultrie as untenable, and concentrated his small force in Fort Sumter. The South Carolina rebels protested, and demanded its surrender, and Buchanan had been good enough to treat with them about it. It was now discovered that the fort was but slightly provisioned, and

must be either relieved or evacuated. At first the new Administration was inclined to choose the latter alternative; but before April was a week old, for some reason, probably popular pressure, the wind changed; it was resolved to reinforce Sumter, and word to that effect was sent to the Governor of South Carolina. Secession was hanging fire in the Border States; "blood had to be sprinkled in their faces' to bring them to the mark; so the Confederate Secretary of War ordered General Beauregard to reduce the fort. Major Anderson having declined to surrender it, fire was opened on the fort April 12th, forcing Anderson to capitulate within thirty-six hours.

On the 15th President Lincoln issued a proclamation calling out the militia of the several States to the number of seventy-five thousand to suppress combinations in the Southern States against the laws, and summoning both Houses of Congress to assemble in extraordinary session on the 4th of July. We had not at that moment a thousand soldiers at command for the defence of Washington. We could neither feed nor move five thousand men. We had less than a score of war ships. We could hardly borrow a few thousands at ten or twelve per cent. Six or eight months later, notwithstanding the general underrating of the meaning of the crisis, resulting in the calling of one soldier for three months where ten should have been called for four years-notwithstanding the exceeding disappointment and the bad effect of the field of Bull Run, we had six hundred thousand three-years' men in the ranks; we had arms, munitions, and supplies for a million men; we had a complete commissariat and transportation service for a continental war; we had hundreds of war ships, were blockading two thousand miles of coast, and the people took fifty millions of Government seven per cent stock at par in a single day. Such was the effect of the firing on Sumter. When the smoke of the bombardment lifted it showed Charleston Harbor under blockade, Fort Pickens reinforced and saved, troops enough concentrated to render the Capital momentarily safe, and regiments of militia en route to Washington from half the Northern States. The

first company from Northern Indiana, Andrew Anderson, Jr., Captain, left South Bend for the rendezvous at Indianapolis on the 18th. The President was tendered forty thousand men in excess of his call; in a second proclamation he accepted them and eighteen thousand seamen. He directed the increase of the regular army, and proclaimed the Southern coast under blockade. The garrisons of Forts McHenry and Monroe were strengthened, the Baltimore mob was quelled, Cairo occupied and fortified, secession at St. Louis stamped out, and the Union sentiment in Kentucky and Maryland encouraged to assert itself. On the other hand, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Eastern Virginia were carried over to the Confederacy, with little if any regard to the wishes of the people; the Confederate capital was removed from Montgomery to Richmond, and Southern troops were concentrated in Virginia. Western Virginia took a decided stand against secession, and the rebel forces in that quarter were soon flying before the Indiana and Ohio Volunteers.

Mr. Colfax was on the wing during these weeks-to St. Joseph, Mo., as the guest of the city, and on confidential missions for the Government in many of the States and in Canada. The volunteers of the different States were anxious not to be outdone by one another; and when Colfax procured immediate marching orders for three regiments of Indiana Volunteers, and secured permission for these three-months' men to serve through the war, it was esteemed the highest service he could render them. He got them Minié rifles instead of the muskets first distributed, and having done all he could for them, he says in his paper: Thousands of anxious hearts will follow them, rejoicing in their successes and mourning over their losses, and none with deeper interest than the writer, who happens to know, personally, more of them than any other one they leave behind." He followed them, and regiment after regiment that left his district and the State afterward, with a solicitude changing more and more into pain as they came not back, harder to bear than it would have been to go with them and share their fortunes.

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