Chap. IV. suffered to elapse before he hazarded an advance. On the Upper Potomac, above Harper's Ferry, Patterson, in command of 20,000 troops, was opposed to the Confederate General Joseph Johnson, by whom he was greatly overmatched in military skill; and Butler, who had been sent by sea, with 15,000 men, to establish himself at Fortress Monroe and menace the surrounding country, had received on the 10th June, in attempting to penetrate inland, a sharp check from a Confederate force under Magruder. At length, on the 16th July, McDowell began to move. Advancing southwards, with an army which may be reckoned at about 35,000 men, he found the enemy strongly posted amidst broken ground, near a point where the southern and western railways intersect, and a line strikes off, through the hills, to the valley of the Shenandoah. Here he fought a pitched battle, sustained a severe defeat, and was driven back in disorder Washington. upon After this disaster, the command of the army of the Potomac was transferred to General McClellan, who had distinguished himself by a smart and successful campaign in Western Virginia; but no second attempt was made, until the spring of 1862, to advance beyond a day's march from Washington. McClellan occupied himself in drilling and organizing an army which rose by the middle of October to 150,000, and by the end of the year to nearly 220,000 strong. The coasts of North and South Carolina were visited by Federal squadrons, some forts destroyed, and a permanent lodgment effected at Port Royal; and in Kentucky and Missouri a desultory war was waged, extending over a wide surface, and bringing into the field on both sides forces which in the aggregate were considerable. This, in brief, is the military history of the remainder of the year, which saw, as it wore on, enormous and increasing bodies of combatants drawn from the pursuits of industry to slaughter one another. Chap. IV. The Confederate troops in the field are reckoned to have exceeded 200,000 in August, and 290,000 at a later period. The total strength of the Federal armies on the 1st December was estimated by the War Department at upwards of 660,000 men.1 The revolt of the Confederate States has some characteristic features. We cannot fail to be struck by the celerity with which the revolted communities established a regular Government, the long interval which was suffered to elapse before any attempt was made to reconquer them, and the footing of equality on which 1 The following statement shows the demands made on the North and West up to May 1864: 1861. April May 15.-Proclamation calling out Militia to the aggregate number of 75,000. 3. Call for 39 volunteer regiments of Infantry, and 1 July 22 & 25.-Congress authorizes enlistment of 500,000 Volunteers. July 2-Call for 300,000 Volunteers. August 4.-President orders a draft of 300,000 militia. 1863. March June 3. Conscription Act. 15.-Call for 100,000 men for 6 months to repel the October 17.-Call for 300,000 men to serve for 3 years, or the war. 1864. February 1.-Draft for 500,000 men for 3 years, or the war. March 14.-Draft for 200,000 additional men for the army, navy, and marine corps, to supply navy and provide reserve. April 23.-25,000 one-hundred-day men tendered by Ohio, Indiana, Chap. IV. the combatants met at their first encounter in the field. The explanation of these things is easy, and lies upon the surface of this narrative. The eleven States were completely organized as self-governed communities before they attempted to sever their connection with the Union; as a Confederacy, they had only to reproduce and set in motion a machinery with the working of which they were perfectly familiar, and of which both the model and the materials were ready to their hands. Yet, could the Federal Government have marched an army on Charleston as soon as South Carolina issued her Declaration of Independence, the revolt might have been crushed in its infancy, and the Union might have been saved four years of devastation and carnage. But the Federal Government was paralyzed, not only by its own weakness, but by peculiar restraints and extraordinary difficulties. It had at its disposal no regular army. The regular troops of the United States, in April 1861, numbered barely 16,000, not much more than enough to keep in check the roving Indian tribes of the Far West, which is ordinarily their chief employment. Armies had to be raised on both sides, and they could be raised on one side almost as fast as on the other, though they could not be sustained as long. Further, there is no doubt that the Federal Government was really embarrassed, as I have already said, by that peculiar reluctance to resort to force which an American Government might be expected to entertain. This reluctance the consciousness that it was generally felt around him—the fear lest an attempt to "invade should drive (as in fact it did) the Border Slave States, in whom the feeling was most keen and irritable, into open revolt-the hope, which many sensible and experienced men were loth to abandon, that attachment to the Union might yet revive, and the Confederacy, if left to itself, crumble away-these influences speak in Mr. Lincoln's inaugural address, though they can hardly be said to supply a reasonable account of his policy.1 Chap. IV. Americans have been accustomed to think and speak of their Government as resting altogether on the consent of the governed. It is in truth, more than most othersperhaps more than any, though all are so, more or less-supported by an intelligent opinion, pervading the bulk of the community, that it exists for the general good. But, like every other Government without exception, it is supported also by force; it would, indeed, be no Government, and its laws no laws, if it had not power to compel obedience to its authority, or were not ready, in case of necessity, to exert that power. The necessity came, and was accepted; but it came in the form of a revolt of a large part of the whole population of the Union-a revolt which had attained its full proportions before any attempt was made to subdue it. It had then to be attacked, not as sovereigns suppress insurrections, but as nations wage a great war. Government was confronted with Government; armies were arrayed against armies; the seat of rebellion could only be reached by invading, with all the precautions which invaders use, a hostile territory; resistance could only be overcome, after a long and most obstinate struggle, by a re-conquest so stern and thorough that for years after the contest had ceased all the inhabitants of the South had to be kept under military rule, in the prostrate condition of a subject people. 1 Mr. Seward (April 10th), after speaking of the manifest instability of the Confederacy, and the President's hope that the Southern people would be wise enough to see it, wrote: "For these reasons he would not be disposed to reject a cardinal doctrine of theirs, namely, that the Federal Government could not reduce the seceding States to obedience by conquest, even although he were disposed to question that proposition. But, in fact, the President willingly accepts it as true. Only an imperial or despotic Government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected or revolutionary members of the State. This Federal Republican system of ours is of all forms of government the very one which is most unfitted for such a labour.”—Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams, 10th April, 1861. Chap. IV Note I. NOTE I. Opinions of American Courts and American Lawyers on the Question at what date the War ought to be deemed to have begun. It may be convenient to state here the view taken of the contest by the legal tribunals of the United States. The questions (1), whether it was a war; (2), at what time it become a war; (3), what were its effects (a) under the municipal law of the United States on the status of citizens and inhabitants of the revolted States, and (b) under international law on the rights of foreign Powers and their subjects (questions some of which had previously occupied the District Courts sitting as Courts of Prize), were elaborately discussed and carefully decided by the Supreme Court, in December Term, 1862. This judgment settled the law of the United States on these important questions, and I shall therefore place it under the reader's eye, omitting only such parts of it as dealt with the special circumstances by which the Appellants' Counsel endeavoured to withdraw particular cases from the operation of the general principle. The "Hiawatha," &c., Prize Cases.-The question was, whether certain vessels and cargoes, some the property of persons resident in the Confederate States, others owned by foreigners, were properly captured for breach of the blockade, instituted under the President's Proclamations of April 1861. All the nine Judges were agreed that the validity of the captures turned on the question whether the President had, in April 1861, "power to set on foot a blockade under the Law of Nations." They were all agreed that he had no such power, unless war existed at the time. On this last point they were divided. Four (including Chief Justice Taney) held that the Federal Courts could not recognize the existence of a public or civil war "carrying with it belligerent rights" until it had been recognized by Congress. They held that it was recognized for the first time by the Act of Congress, 13th July, 1861, and that captures, jure belli, made before that Act, must be regarded by the tribunals of the United States as invalid. The propositions contained in the judgment of the majority, which was the judgment of the Court, may be stated as follows: 1. At and before the date of the President's Proclamation of blockade a war was in existence, under which the Government of the United States was entitled to exercise the jus belli, both against its enemy and against neutrals. 2. The "belligerent powers" were the Confederated States on one side, "acting as States" and as a Confederacy, and the United States, claiming sovereignty over the Confederated States, on the other side. 3. The blockade was an act of war instituted jure belli, by virtue of a right which had already accrued and which sprang from the existence of a war. The Proclamations did not originate the war, but |