quently. His personal relation to God occupied his mind much. He was deeply concerned to know, as he told a visiting delegation once, not whether the Lord was on his side, but whether he was on the Lord's side. Henceforth, one of the most real influences in Abraham Lincoln's life and conduct is his dependence upon a personal God.

CHAPTER XXV

LINCOLN AND EMANCIPATION

THE 22d of February was the day that the President had set for an advance of the army but it was evident to both the Administration and the country that the Army of the Potomac would not be ready to move then. Nor could anybody find from McClellan when he would move. The muttering of the country began again. Committee after committee waited on the President. He did his best to assure them that he was doing all he could. He pointed out to them how time and patience, as well as men and money, were needed in war, and he argued that, above all, he must not be interfered with. It was at this time that he used his striking illustration of Blondin. Some gentlemen from the West called at the White House one day, excited and troubled about some of the commissions or omissions of the Administration. The President heard them patiently, and then replied:" Gentlemen, suppose all the property you were worth was in gold and you had put it in the hands of Blondin, to carry across the Niagara river on a rope. Would you shake the cable or keep shouting at him, ' Blondin, stand up a little straighter-Blondin, stoop a little more-go a little faster-lean a little more to the north-lean a little more to the south?' No, you would hold your breath as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he was safe over. The Government is carrying an enormous weight. Untold treasures are in their hands; they are doing the very best they Don't badger them. Keep silence, and we will get you safe across."

can.

One of the most insistent of the many bodies which beset him was the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, appointed the December before. Aggressive and patriotic, these gentlemen were determined the army should move. But it was not until March that they became convinced that anything would be done. One day early in that month, Senator Chandler, of Michigan, a member of the committee, met George W. Julian. He was in high glee. "Old Abe is mad," he said to Julian, "and the war will now go on."

Whether it would or not remained to be seen but it was soon evident to everybody that the President was going to make another effort to have it go on for on March 8 he issued General War Orders Nos. II and III, the first dividing the Army of the Potomac into four army corps and the second directing that the move against Richmond by the way of the 'Chesapeake bay should begin as early as the 18th of March and that the general-in-chief should be responsible for its moving as early as that day. In this order Lincoln made the important stipulation that General McClellan should make no change of base without leaving in and about Washington a force sufficient to guarantee its safety.

When Lincoln issued the above orders which were finally to drive McClellan from his quarters around Washington, the war against the South had been going on for nearly a year. In that time the North had succeeded in gathering and equipping an army of about 630,000 men, but this army had not so far materially changed the line of hostilities between the North and South, save in the West, where Kentucky and Northern Missouri had been cleared of most of the Confederates. A navy had been collected but beyond establishing a partial blockade of the ports of the Confederacy it had done little. The ineffectiveness of the great effort the North had made was charged naturally to the inefficiency of

From a photograph owned by Mr. James B. Speed of Louisville, Kentucky, to whose courtesy we owe the right to reproduce it here. When Lincoln was visiting Joshua F. Speed in 1841, Mrs. Speed, the mother of his friend, became much interested in him. His melancholy was profound, and she tried by kindness and gentleness to arouse him to new interest in life. One day before his departure she asked one of her daughters for the latter's Oxford Bible, telling her she wanted it for Mr. Lincoln, and promising to get another in its place. The gift touched Lincoln deeply, and after he became President he remembered the giver with the above portrait-one he had taken especially for her, he wrote.