"I have come among you not as an enemy, but as your friend and fellow-citizen; not to injure or annoy you, but to respect the rights and enforce the rights of all loyal citizens. An enemy in rebellion against one common Government has taken possession of and planted its guns on the soil of Kentucky and fired upon our flag. Hickman and Columbus are in his hands. He is moving upon your city. I am here to defend you against this enemy, and to assist and maintain the authority and sovereignty of your Government and mine. I have nothing to do with opinion. I shall deal only with armed rebellion and its aiders and abettors."

"I like that address," said President Lincoln, when he read it. "Its modesty and brevity show that the officer issuing it understands the situation, and is a proper man to command there at this time." (")

With the coming of autumn a series of antislavery lectures was given in the Smithsonian Institute, Washington. They were attended by the President, who was much pleased with one given by Horace Greeley, editor of the New York "Tribune.”

"That lecture," he said to Mr. Greeley, "is full of good thoughts, and I would like to take it home with me and read it over next Sunday."(*)

Mr. Lincoln, as he walked out in the afternoons for exercise, often met a gentleman whose courteous bearing and kindly face arrested his attention.

May I be so rude as to ask your name?" said the President, extending his hand.

"I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Henry. I long have heard of you. Come to the White House. I want to know about the Smithsonian Institute, with which you are connected, and what is going on in the world of science." (")

The acquaintance ripened into one of affectionate intimacy. Professor Henry spent many evenings in the family apartments at the White House. It was a great relief to the President, after the perplexities of the day, to converse with one of the foremost scientists of the age.

Whispers were in the air of a military movement at Edwards Ferry, near Leesburg. I hastened to General McClellan's headquarters, but

as a

aius and clerks had no information for a correspondent. There Oct. 21. was an air of mystery and reticence which usually acts stimulant to a journalist. While waiting to obtain an interview with General McClellan, President Lincoln entered the room. He gave me a cordial greeting, but there were signs of intense anxiety on his

countenance.

"Is General McClellan in ?" he asked.

"He is, Mr. President," the reply of a lieutenant. Several minutes passed, during which the only sound breaking the painful silence was the clicking of the telegraph.

"Will you please walk this way, Mr. President?" said the lieutenant, returning from McClellan's apartment.

A few minutes later, Mr. Lincoln, with his head bowed upon his breast, his hands clasped to his heart, shuffling, tottering, reeling as if beneath a staggering blow, moved once more through the room. Never before had I seen such anguish on a human countenance as upon his face. He stumbled, but did not fall. He walked towards the White House, carrying not only the burden of the nation, but unspeakable private grief-the intelligence of the disaster at Ball's Bluff, and the death of his old-time friend, Colonel Edward Dickinson Baker. (See "Drum-beat of the Nation," p. 117.) Very dear had been their friendship. They had practised law together in Springfield, “ridden the circuit" side by side till the outbreak of the war with Mexico, in which Baker served as colonel. He had been elected Senator from Oregon. When the Rebellion began he raised a regiment at his own expense in New York and Pennsylvania. President Lincoln offered to make him a brigadier-general, but the offer was declined. I recalled a scene in the Senate a few weeks before his death. Senator Breckinridge, Vice-president under Buchanan, was bitterly opposing the prosecution of the war.

At

"War is separation; it is disunion-eternal disunion," he said. this moment Colonel Baker, wearing his uniform, entered the chamber. He had not resigned his senatorship. He did not intend to remain, or notice what was going on, but stood for a moment as if riveted to the spot, then deliberately seated himself and looked into the face of the former Vice-president.

"We have," Breckinridge went on, "separation now; it will be worse as the war goes on. In addition to the moans and cries of widows and orphans, you will hear the cry of distress for the wants and comforts of life. . . . The Pacific slope is now devoted, doubtless, to the Union; but if you increase the burdens of taxation, will they remain? You already see New England and the great North-west in a measure divided. Fight twelve months and you will have three confederacies, and a little longer and you will have four."

Colonel Baker arose. "Mr. President," he said, "what words are these? What their meaning? Are they not words of brilliant, pol

ished treason? What would have been thought if, in another capital, another republic, in a yet more martial age, a Senator as grave-not more eloquent or dignified than the Senator from Kentucky, yet with the Roman purple flowing over his shoulders-had risen in his place, surrounded by all the illustrations of Roman glory, and declared that advancing Hannibal was just, and that Carthage ought to be dealt with in terms of peace? What would have been thought if, after the battle of Cannæ, a Senator had then risen in his place and denounced every levy of the Roman people, every expenditure of its treasure, and every appeal to the old recollections and the old glories?"

A voice was heard that of William Pitt Fessenden, of Maine: "He would have been hurled from the Tarpeian Rock."

"Does not the Senator from Kentucky know," continued Baker, "that every word he has uttered will be an inspiration to every Confederate ear? For myself, I have no such words to utter. For me, amid temporary defeat, disaster, disgrace, it seems that my duty calls me to utter another word-a word for bold, sudden, forward, determined war, according to the laws of war, advancing with all the past glories of the republic urging us on."

"I warn Southern gentlemen," said Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, "that if this war continues there will be a time when it will be declared a free nation, that every bondman of the South belonging to rebels-I confine it to them-shall be called upon to aid us in a war against their masters and to restore the Union."

Colonel Baker had obeyed the orders of his superior officer in an ill-planned movement resulting in disaster. A few hours after witnessing the agony of President Lincoln, I stood beside the body of the fallen commander, and beheld his face peaceful in death, and recalled the lines he had composed "To a Wave:"

In Missouri and Virginia slaves were flocking to the Union Army. No argument was needed to convince them the war was being waged on their account-that the Stars and Stripes was the banner of freedom. They were ready to act as guides, use the spade and shovel,

drive teams, cook for officers and soldiers. We shall see as this biography goes on the gradual growth of the idea that slavery had caused the war, that it was in a great degree the strength of the Rebellion, and must be annihilated.

Senator Trumbull, of Illinois, introduced a bill in Congress which gave freedom to all slaves used by the rebels in carrying on the war. Senator Breckinridge, of Kentucky, and other members from the border Slave States opposed it. Those who advocated its passage said slaves were constructing fortifications, driving teams, and doing the drudgery in the Confederate armies without pay. It was the expectation of their freedom that led them to steal away from their cabins at night and enter the Union lines. The bill became a law.

General Fremont, (°) who had been Republican candidate for President in 1856, was military commander in Missouri, and proclaimed martial law, declaring slaves of rebels to be free men. The proclamation was hailed with joy by those who wanted to see slavery at once swept from the land, but it gave great offence to those who were prosecuting the war solely for the preservation of the Union. General Fremont had assumed an authority not conferred upon him by Congress, and the President was obliged to inform him and the public that the proclamation must be set aside. This act of President Lincoln was severely denounced by those who demanded the immediate abolition of slavery, and who saw only one phase of the struggle. There was another side which the President saw, and he made it very plain in a letter to one of his friends:

"The proclamation is simply dictatorship. It assumes that a general may do anything he pleases-confiscate the lands and free the slaves of loyal people, as well as disloyal ones. ... I cannot assume this reckless position, nor allow others to assume it on my responsibility. . . . What I object to is that as President I shall expressly or impliedly seize and exercise the legislative function of government. . . . No doubt the thing was popular in some quarters. The Kentucky Legislature would not budge till the proclamation was modified, and General Anderson telegraphed me that on the news of General Fremont having actually issued deeds of manumission, a whole company of our volunteers threw down their arms and disbanded. I was so amazed to think that the very arms furnished Kentucky would be turned against us. I think that to lose Kentucky is nearly to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we cannot hold Missouri, nor, as I think, land. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. trary, if you will give up your restlessness for new positions and back me up manfully on the grounds upon which you and other kind friends gave me the election, we shall go through triumphantly."

e had

MaryOn the con

The man whom divine Providence had called to be ruler of the