His eyes were everywhere; and everywhere the commanders and soldiers, in camp and field, were made conscious of his thoughtful sympathy, and made to feel the eager help with which he urged them to the performance of their duty. He gave them all but his personal presence, and his telegraphic correspondence proves that they almost had that also. Still the records of battles and sieges, in whatever section or locality, belong to the history of the war and not to the "life" of the

man.

The year 1862 contained other than military problems for Mr. Lincoln to meet and solve. Our foreign affairs were sufficiently complicated by the almost unconcealed sympathy of England and France with the Jefferson Davis government. Mr. Seward had already established a high reputation as a diplomatist by the skill and vigor with which he had continually parried their expressions of half-angry discontent. The Confederate ruler had it in mind to establish closer relations with these very powers, and with that object sent out two commissioners, duly accredited. These men, named Mason and Slidell, had both been members of the Senate of the United States. Escaping from Charleston to Cuba, they sailed from Havana, on the 7th of November, on the British mail-steamer Trent, bound for St. Thomas. On the next day the Trent was stopped at sea by the United States war-steamer San Jacinto, Captain Wilkes; the two commissioners were taken out of her by force, against the protests of her officers, and carried to the United States to be shut up in Fort Warren.

It was a high-handed proceeding, strongly resembling, in many of its features, the accustomed course of Great Britain in dealing with weaker powers; and the indignation it aroused in the British mind, official and otherwise, was extreme. It was natural that such should be the case; but the tone and manner in which the indignation found expression rendered the task of offering reparation a peculiarly hard one. The path to hostilities was made easy and the path to peace was half shut up.

At the same time Mr. Lincoln's perplexities were multiplied by the state of the public mind at the North. It was exceedingly bitter against England, for it was well understood that her ill offices to us in our hour of trouble had but lamely halted short of open war, and that further evil was sure to come to us from her. Popular patience was nearly exhausted, and, for a moment, the general opinion was plainly and loudly uttered that avowed and regular hostilities could do us little more harm than could the veiled but steady pressure and the secret thrusts of a half-concealed enmity. The capture of the two Rebel emissaries was hailed with an acclaim as boisterous as if Captain Wilkes had won a great sea-fight and had not disturbed the shadowy "law of nations" in the least. He became, in fact, the hero of the hour.

It was necessary, however, that we should have no open quarrel with England, and the law of the matter was sufficiently in her favor to enable the United States to withdraw with dignity, almost in spite of her.

At that juncture of the struggle with the South, a new crisis; British fleets upon the coast; British supplies of money and war material pouring into the ports of the Confederacy without restriction, instead of under serious difficulties; British annoyance of Northern seaports, and the necessity for the immediate conquest of the Canadas by the United States,―would have added terribly to the burdens of the nation. The result to the United States might have been the same, in the long-run; but the "run" would have been longer, and the cost vastly greater. England, indeed, might have been badly crippled; but there would have been loss instead of gain in that, for no sensible American wishes to see her crippled. In fact, it is hard to imagine anything more short-sighted and stupid than the enmity of the then government of England to the cause of the Union. As Mr. Lincoln pointedly remarked to the English people in his next Message to the Congress of the United States, the shortest way out of the commercial diffi

culties resulting to foreign nations from our civil war was to be found in the prompt suppression rather than in the prolonged maintenance of the Rebellion. It was strictly true; and if England and France suffered losses from the continuance of the war, the responsibility therefor was largely their own. England was practically and very effectively the ally of the South, on land and sea; while the animus of the French Imperial Government, never more than externally courteous, found its most perfect expression at last in its ill-fated Mexican policy, rendered possible only by the fact that the hands of the United States were tied from interfering.

The refusal of Mr. Lincoln to be dragged into a war with England was a bitter disappointment to the Confederacy and to all our other national enemies, and not even the truly admirable management of the matter by the Secretary of State could altogether satisfy the angry patriots who had glorified Captain Wilkes.

The government was roundly and lavishly berated; but the two Rebel commissioners were liberated; and Captain Wilkes was soon promoted.

Mr. Lincoln was under a perpetual pressure from the most sincere and earnest supporters of the government, for these were mostly men of positive minds and strong convictions. They were the very men to make a great nation out of, and they spoke their minds liberally. They could not see all the obstacles in his way, as he saw them, nor was it always safe to explain too fully and minutely what he was doing.

The very existence of some of his most serious hindrances had to be kept to himself. The men were by no means numerous who could have been made to understand the methods pursued with the border-States, and notably with Kentucky. That name and those of Maryland and Missouri and Delaware, and so forth, were but geographical expressions to the great majority. The President, however, was dealing, not with geography and local boundaries, but with men, and their prejudices

and fears and self-interests, and, what was all-important, with their sure changes of opinion.

In the same Message to the Congress above mentioned, he was able to say: "These three States, of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, neither of which would promise a single soldier at the first, have now an aggregate of not less than forty thousand in the field for the Union; while, of their citizens, certainly not more than a third of that number, and they of doubtful whereabouts and doubtful existence, are in arms against it."

CHAPTER XLIV.

A DARK WINTER.

Fredericksburg-A Lost Opportunity-Burnside and Hooker-The Burdens of a Military Establishment-Congressional Counselors-The Heart of the Nation-An Extraordinary Ambassador-The Birth of the Union League.

THE year 1862 closed, both for the country and for Mr. Lincoln, in the great grief of the defeat of the Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg. It was a blow of peculiar severity to the President, for he was made to seem responsible for the movements which led to it and for the mismanaged battle itself. It affected him very deeply, and yet, now that all the facts have been sought out, it is impossible to charge him with any fault in the premises.

That he had earnestly insisted upon active operations was true. He had done that daily, from the outset; but he had not undertaken to direct details; and the inexcusable blunders of the Fredericksburg fight were committed without his knowledge.

The history of the affair had deep lessons in it. By an understanding with General Burnside, General McClellan continued in command until the 9th of November, and the orders for the forward movement were issued by him in person. No change, for a number of days, was made in the plans which he had previously approved. General Halleck had at once called upon General Burnside for a "plan of campaign," and the latter prepared and submitted an abstract of his conception of the situation. This did not meet the approval of the Generalin-Chief, and he at once went, in person, to General Burnside's headquarters, at Warrenton, Virginia. Here, on the 12th and