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The President improved the temporary misfortune of the fall of Fort Sumter by calling on the militia of the States to reinforce the Federal army, and summoning Congress for its counsel and aid in the emergency. On the other hand, the insurrectionists have met those measures with an invitation to privateers from all lands to come forth and commit depredations on the commerce of the country.

May 4, 1861. The insurgents have instituted revolution with open, flagrant, deadly war to compel the United States to acquiesce in the dismemberment of the Union. The United States have accepted this civil war as an inevitable necessity. The constitutional remedies for all the complaints of the insurgents are still open to them, and will remain so. But, on the other hand, the land and naval forces of the Union have been put into activity to restore the Federal authority and to save the Union from danger.

There is not now, nor has there been, nor will there be any, the least idea existing in this government of suffering a dissolution of this Union to take place in any way whatever.

July 26, 1861. Our army of the Potomac on Sunday last met a reverse equally severe and unexpected. For a day or two the panic which had produced the result was followed by a panic that seemed to threaten to demoralize the country. But that evil has ceased. The result is already seen in a vigorous reconstruction on a scale of greater magnitude and increased enthusiasm. The exaggerations of the result have been as great as the public impatience, perhaps, which brought it about. But the affair will not produce any serious injury. The strength of the insurrection is not broken, but it is not formidable. The vigor of the government will be increased, and the ultimate result will be a triumph of the Constitution. Do not be misled by panic reports of danger apprehended for the capital.

July 30, 1861. You will be pained by the intelligence of a reverse of our arms near Manassas Junction, and I fear it will, for a time, operate to excite apprehensions and encourage the enemies of the Union in Europe; but the blow has already spent its force here without producing any other effect than renewed resolution and confidence in the success of the government. The lesson that war cannot be waged successfully without wisdom as well as patriotism has been received at a severe cost; but, perhaps it was necessary. It is certain that we are improving upon it.

July 30, 1861. You will receive the account of a deplorable reverse of our arms at Manassas. For a week or two that event will elate the friends of the insurgents in Europe as it confounded and bewildered the friends of the Union here for two or three days. The shock, however, has passed away, producing no other results. than a resolution stronger and deeper than ever to maintain the Union, and a prompt and effective augmentation of the forces for that end, exceeding what would otherwise have been possible. The heart of the country is sound. Its temper is now more favorable to the counsels of deliberation and wisdom.

August 12, 1861. The shock produced by the reverse of our arms at Bull Run has passed away. The army is reorganized; the elections show that reaction against disunion has begun in the revolutionary States, and we may confidently look for a restoration of the national authority throughout the Union.

If our foreign relations were once promptly reëstablished on their former basis, the disunion sentiment would languish and perish within a year.

August 15, 1861.- We learn, in a manner which obliges us to give unwilling credit, that the Sumter, an armed steamer, well known through all the American seas to be a privateer fitted out for and actually engaged in depredations upon the commerce of the United States by some disloyal citizens, under the command of an officer named Semmes, on or about the 17th of July last entered the port of Curaçoa, and communicated directly with the local authorities of that island.

September 2, 1861.-Steadily for the period of four months our forces have been coming into the field at the rate of two thousand a day, and the same augmentation will go on nearly at the same rate until 500,000 men will be found in the service. Our supplies of arms are running low.

We have now reached a new and important stage in the war. The enemy is directly before us, invigorated and inspirited by a victory, which it is not the part of wisdom for us to undervalue. But that victory has brought with it the necessity for renewed and decisive action with proportionate results. The demoralization of our forces has passed away. I have already stated that they are increasing in numbers. You will learn through other channels that they are equally perfecting themselves in discipline. Commander

Stringham and General Butler's success at Hatteras was not merely a brilliant affair. It brings nearly the whole coast of North Carolina under the surveillance of our blockade. . . . Disunion, by surprise and impetuous passion, took the first successes, and profited by them to make public opinion in Europe. Union comes forward more slowly, but with greater and more enduring vigor. This nation, like every other, in the present as in all other cases, stands by its own strength. Other powers will respect it so long as it exhibits its ability to defend and save itself.

September 5, 1861. Reports grossly exaggerated a disaster which was sufficiently afflicting in its real proportions. The exultation of persons and classes in foreign nations prejudiced against our country and its institutions is one of the penalties we pay for the civil discord into which we have fallen. But even a very limited experience of human nature will enable us to practise the necessary equanimity in such a crisis. Changes of habit and policy are necessary to national growth and progress. We have had little reason to expect that such changes in our case should always be effected without the occurrence of some disorder and violence. Let . us be content that the country has virtue enough to pass the ordeal safely, and that when it is passed our prosperity will be greater and more assured than ever.

September 5, 1861.-I can well understand the depression you experienced on hearing of the reverse of our arms at Bull Run, and the unfavorable comments on our course which this misfortune elicits in Europe. There is, however, no occasion for apprehension of an unfavorable issue of the present civil contest.

Whatever speculations on the subject may be made at home or abroad, you may be assured that it is not in our day that treason is to prevail against the government of our country, based as it is on the rights of man and his capacity of self-government.

September 7, 1861. We have already forgotten the reverse of our arms at Bull Run, which affected you so deeply, and the prospect of the restoration of the authority of the Union is entirely satisfactory. Our volunteer army will, I have no doubt, vindicate its character and win back the confidence of the country and its friends.

November 22, 1861. It is a matter of regret that we cannot consistently offer special inducements to military gentlemen in Italy who are unable to defray their own expenses in coming to join our

armies; but we are forbidden to do so by urgent considerations. First, we do not need to solicit foreign aid, and we naturally desire to avoid the appearance of doing so. Secondly, we wish to abstain from intrusion into the domestic concerns of foreign states, and, of course, from seeming to do so. Thirdly, our own countrymen are coming forward with just claims upon all positions requiring skill in the art of war, and we must avoid jealousies between native and foreign defenders of the Union. Already the forces in the field exceed half a million, and the officers charged with organizing them report to us that those recently recruited will swell the number to seven hundred thousand. If the insurrection should continue, it would be more difficult to keep them down to a million than to lift them up to that figure.

November 23, 1861.I have regretted quite as much as you have my inability at this moment to give advices to you and each other of our representatives abroad of the course of events occurring at home, and of the general drift of our correspondence with other nations; but this domestic commotion has ripened into a transaction so vast as to increase more than fourfold the labors of administration in every department. You can readily imagine how vast a machinery has been created in the War Department, in the Navy Department, and in the Treasury Department, respectively. The head of each is a man of busy occupations, high responsibilities, and perplexing cares. You would hardly suppose that a similar change has come over the modest little State Department of other and peaceful days; but the exactions upon it are infinite, and out of all that offers itself to be done, I can only select and do that which cannot be wisely or safely left undone.

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November 30, 1861. Captain Wilkes, in the Steamer San Jacinto, has boarded a British colonial steamer, and taken from her deck two insurgents who were proceeding to Europe on an errand of treason against their own country. Lord Lyons has prudently refrained from opening the subject to me, as, I presume, waiting instructions from home. We have done nothing on the subject to anticipate the discussion, and we have not furnished you with any explanations. We adhere to that course now, because we think it more prudent that the ground taken by the British government should be first made to us here, and that the discussion, if there

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must be one, shall be had here. In the capture of Messrs. Mason and Slidell on board a British vessel, Captain Wilkes having acted without any instructions from the government, the subject is therefore free from the embarrassment which might have resulted if the act had been specially directed by us.1

January 14, 1862. — You will have learned already of the action of this government in the case of the Trent, and you will be able to calculate as wisely as we upon the signs of peace between us and Great Britain.

It hardly can be necessary to say that the counsels of prudence will be pursued here until the point of national safety and honor compel a change of disposition. The condition of affairs is that the insurrection does not advance, while the cause of the Union steadily gains important advantages.

Our arms continue to be steadily successful, and when we shall have completed our financial arrangements I trust that the cause of the Union will become as hopeful as it is just.

January 20, 1862. — We have reason to be satisfied with our course in the Trent affair. The American people could not have been united in a war which, being waged to maintain Captain Wilkes's act of force, would have practically been a voluntary war against Great Britain. At the same time it would have been a war in 1861 against Great Britain for a cause directly the opposite of the cause for which we waged war against the same power in 1812.

January 20, 1862. The tone of the public virtue is becoming sounder and stronger every day. Military and naval operations go on with success, hindered only by the weather, which, for almost a month, has rendered the coasts unsafe and the roads impassable.

I have observed that the British people were satisfied with the vigor and the energy of the preparations which their government made for the war which they expected to occur between them and ourselves.

It may be profitable for us all to reflect that the military and naval preparations which have been made by this government to put down the insurrection have, every day since the first day of May last, equalled, if not surpassed, the daily proportion of those war preparations which were regarded as so demonstrative in Great Britain.

1 See post, pages 295-310.

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