"float over the dome of the old Capitol at Washington before the 1st of May." *

Looking back now at the events of the first month of Lincoln's administration, we must wonder at the impression which prevailed then, and which has so often been expressed by impulsive men since, that he was too slow in making his decision to provision and reenforce Fort Sumter.

We find that on the 15th of March, only ten days after his first information about the condition of the fort, he formally asked the written opinion of his Cabinet on the subject; and that on the 6th of April, only three weeks later, he gave his final order that the expedition should proceed on its mission. The intervening time was spent by him in consulting his Cabinet and his military and naval officers about possible plans for relief and reënforcement; about alternative policies to be pursued; watching the culminating treason in the South and the slowly swelling loyalty in the North; awaiting the end of the contradictory words and acts of the Virginia Convention, whose majority protested Unionism in public and at last voted secession in secret; allowing his Secretary of State, by an unofficial negotiation with the rebel commissioners, to disclose the attitude of the Montgomery cabinet; using the delay which the rebels supposed they had contrived for their own benefit for preparing the Sumter expedition; making the individual members of his Cabinet responsible to the party and to the country for the advice they gave; and finally, by all this, to gain a coveted "choice of position" and compel the rebels to attack and thus consolidate the North.

When he finally gave the order that the fleet should sail he was master of the situation; master of his Cabinet; master of the moral attitude and issues of the struggle; master of the public opinion which must arise out of the impending conflict; master if the rebels hesitated or repented, because they would thereby forfeit their prestige with the South; master if they persisted, for he would then command a united North. And all this was done, it must be remembered, not in the retirement which gives calm reflection, but after the rush and hurry of a triumphal journey and the parade of an inauguration, in the confusion of conflicting counsel, the worry of preliminary appointments, the prevalence of an atmosphere of treason and insurrection, the daily defection of Government officials.

In the face of such self-assertion and victory, the verdict of history can never be that he was tardy or remiss; to have acted more "Rebellion Record."

peremptorily in that strange crisis, when all men's minds were simply groping and drifting, would have brought upon him the just criticism of recklessness. No act of his will gain him greater credit than his kindly forbearance and patient wisdom in allowing full time and reflection for the final decision at this supreme juncture. He had said in his inaugural: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors." This promise to the South he kept in its most vital spirit and meaning. An autocratic ruler might have acted more arbitrarily; but in a representative government it would have been imprudent to do otherwise than to await and rely upon the slow but mighty anger of an outraged patriotism.

THE CALL TO ARMS.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN's decision and orders

to prepare the Sumter and Pickens expeditions brought him face to face with the serious possibilities of civil war; and better to understand any military problems with which he might have to deal, he wrote to General Scott on the 1st of April, as follows:

Would it impose too much labor on General Scott to make short, comprehensive, daily reports to me of what occurs in his department, including movements by himself, and under his orders, and the receipt of intelligence? If not, I will thank him to do so.t

General Scott at once complied with the request, and from the 1st of April to the 4th of May sent the President nearly every day a short memorandum in his own handwriting, inclosed in an envelope marked "confidential"- the whole series forming collectively a sort of historical journal of the highest interest and authenticity; and portions of it show better than any comment what was being done by the new Administration to meet the crisis which the Fort Sumter bombardment precipitated upon the country.

"General Scott's daily report, No. 3,"-so indorsed in Lincoln's handwriting and dated April 3, 1861,-in part runs thus:

There will remain in Washington a detachment of

cavalry recruits from Carlisle recruiting depot, about So men and horses; Magruder's horse artillery; Griffin's ditto, belonging to the Military Academy and now needed there; Elsey's foot artillery and Haskin's ditto. The companies of foot artillery are acting as infantry. varies. We heard to-day that the number now there The number of marines at the Washington Navy Yard is some 200. There is not another company of regulars within reach of Washington, except 7 at Fort Monroe, making about 400 men, the minimum force needed there under existing circumstances; one company at the Fayetteville arsenal, N. C., to guard arms and ammunition against a thick population of blacks; a garrison of recruits (50) at Ft. Washington, ten miles Unpublished MS.

they were surprised to find him quiet, even serene, perhaps with a smile on his face and a jest on his lips,— engaged in routine work, and prone to talk of other and more commonplace matters. Of all things the strut and stagey exhibition of mock-heroism were foreign to his nature. Generally it happened that when others in this mood sought him, his own spirit had already been through the fiery trial of resentment-but giving no outward sign, except at times with lowered eyebrow, a slight nodding and shaking of the head, a muttering motion or hard compression of the lips, and, rarely, an emphatic downward gesture with the clenched right hand. His judgment, like his perception, far outran the average mind. While others fumed and fretted at things that were, all his inner consciousness was abroad in the wide realm of possibilities busily searching out the dim and difficult path towards things to be. His easy and natural attention to ordinary occupations afforded no indication of the double mental process which was habitual with him.

So, while the Sumter telegrams were on every tongue and revengeful indignation was in every heart, there was little variation in the business of the Executive Mansion on that eventful Saturday. The miscellaneous gathering was larger there, as it was larger at the Departments, the newspaper and telegraph offices, and the hotels. More leading men and officials called to learn or to impart news. The Cabinet, as by a common impulse, came together and deliberated awhile. All talk, however, was brief, sententious, informal. The issue had not yet been reached. Sumter was still under fire. Nevertheless, the main question required no discussion, not even decision, scarcely an announcement. Jefferson Davis's order and Beauregard's guns had sufficiently defined the coming action of the Government. After this, President, functionaries, and people had but a single purpose, a single duty. Lincoln said little beyond making inquiries about the current reports and criticising the probability or accuracy of their details, and went on receiving visitors, listening to suggestions or recommendations, and signing routine papers as usual throughout the day.

One important exception deserves to be noticed. A committee from the Virginia convention had an appointment for a formal audience with him that morning. The doubling and drifting attitude of the Old Dominion has already been described. The boasted conservatism of that convention was a sham. Its Unionism was vague and traditional; its complaint and contumacy were real and present. Day by day, with the loudest professions of loyalty on their lips, its majority was apolo

gizing to its minority, and by labored argument against secession steadily convincing itself that treason was a necessity if not a duty. Recoiling from the fire of civil war, it yielded itself the more than half-willing cat's-paw of conspiracy. Bewailing the denial of shadowy claims of constitutional rights, it soon voluntarily put on the handcuffs of a grinding military despotism. A step in this road to political ruin was the appointment of a committee to visit Lincoln, requesting that he should define his policy, which request was only a covert and threatening demand for the evacuation of the Southern forts.

To this committee, Messrs. Preston, Stuart, and Randolph, respectively a "conservative," a "Unionist," and a " secessionist," the President read his reply just written,* on this morning of Saturday, April 13. The paper is temperate and dispassionate even to coldness, and indicates his ability to lift questions of public consideration out of the hot, blinding plane of personal feeling into the cool light of reason and expediency. While the rebel guns were still raining bombs and red-hot shot on Sumter, he had already mapped out his course of procedure, based on the facts within his knowledge, but free from all trace of excitement or feeling of revenge.

He told them he had distinctly defined his policy in the inaugural address. It was still the plain and unmistakable chart of his intentions. It had been his plan to hold only the forts still occupied by the Government when he became President.

But if [he continued], as now appears to be true, in thority from these places an unprovoked assault has pursuit of a purpose to drive the United States aubeen made upon Fort Sumter, I shall hold myself at liberty to repossess, if I can, like places which had been seized before the Government was devolved upon me. And in every event I shall, to the extent of my ability, repel force by force. In case it proves true that Fort Sumter has been assaulted, as is reported, I shall perhaps cause the United States mails to be withdrawn from all the States which claim to have seceded, the Government justifies and possibly demands this. I believing that the commencement of actual war against scarcely need to say that I consider the military posts and property situated within the States which claim to the United States as much as they did before the suphave seceded as yet belonging to the Government of posed secession. Whatever else I may do for the purpose, I shall not attempt to collect the duties and imposts by any armed invasion of any part of the country; not meaning by this, however, that I mav upon a border of the country. From the fact that I not land a force deemed necessary to relieve a fort have quoted a part of the inaugural address, it must not be inferred that I repudiate any other part, the whole of which I reaffirm, except so far as what I now say of the mails may be regarded as a modification.†

In this reply of the President we have his entire administrative policy regarding the rebellion; but it must be noted that it goes only to the extent of his actual information it deals only with accomplished facts. The programme of the inaugural is already modified; the modification is slight but significant, and based not upon caprice or resentment, but on necessity. According to fair interpretation of language, the programme of the inaugural was that he would execute the laws of the Union in all the States to the extent of his ability; hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government, and collect the duties and imposts. This he would do, however, only so far as it was necessary to protect and defend the Federal authority, not merely against domestic violence, but more especially against foreign influence or aggression. He would not invade, subjugate, menace, or harass local communities. All boundaries of the nation, sea-board or inland, he must, of necessity, hold and guard; he must occupy and control every custom-house or an efficient equivalent for it. The favorite theory was that duties might be collected on shipboard in insurgent ports, and thus avoid the friction of customs officers with the local populace. On inland boundaries other substitutes might perhaps be devised. So, also, he explains in his reply, the military posts he had intended to "hold, occupy, and possess" were this cordon of forts on the exterior boundary, all of which were still in Union hands when he was inaugurated. The interior places seized under Buchanan's administration he would not immediately grasp at with the military hand; he would forego the exercise of Federal offices in disaffected districts in the interior; as a means of reassurance and reconciliation he would even send the malcontents their regular mails, if they would permit him. All this not as a surrender of a single Federal right, but to avoid violence, bloodshed, irritation; to create a feeling of safety; to induce calm reflection; to maintain peace; to restore fraternal sympathies and affections. "You can have no conflict," he had told them, "without being yourselves the aggressors."

But, in immediate connection with the tender of this benign policy, he had also warned them that it would be modified or changed if "current events and experience shall show a modification or change to be proper." That experience had now come. The rebels had rejected the tendered immunity, spurned the proffered peace, become the aggressors, opened the conflict in deliberate malice. He therefore modified his plan. He would repel force by force. He would withdraw the mails. He would recapture Sumter, taken since his in

auguration, and, if he could, such other forts and places taken under his predecessor ás were essential to safety. Thus much was necessary for protection and for precaution. Less he could not do and fulfill his oath of office. Once more he told them that while he now felt himself by their act compelled to close and bolt the strong doors of Federal authority, he would yet refrain from even the appearance of punishment. Though he gave them to understand that he might attack the rebel batteries on Morris Island, or recapture Pensacola Navy Yard, or build a fort on Arlington Heights to protect Washington, yet he would "not attempt to collect the duties and imposts by any armed invasion of any part of the country."

His reply to the committee must be received with the same qualification which he attached to his inaugural. He still reserved the right to use his best discretion in every exigency, and to change his acts under the inspiration of current events and experiences. The events of the day were his beacons; the necessities of the hour formed his chart. Throughout the tedious four-years' war he pretended to no prophecy and recorded no predictions. When souls of little faith and great fear came to him with pertinacious questioning, he might possibly tell them what he had done; he never told them what he intended to do. "My policy is to have no policy," was his pithy axiom oftentimes repeated; whence many illogically and most mistakenly inferred him to be without plans or expedients. His promise to the Virginia committee must therefore be regarded as binding under the conditions of that day, namely: seven cotton-States leagued in rebellion; actual war begun; seven thousand rebels in arms at Charleston; Sumter under fire with prospect of capitulation; Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and other border States yet in the Union under loud protestations of loyalty and unceasing deprecation of civil war. Lincoln's reservation was well considered. week from that day these conditions were transformed almost beyond comparison, compelling him to a widely different line of action. On the day they received their answer, the Virginia committee had an engagement to dine with Secretary Seward; but in view of the Sumter telegrams, they excused themselves and hurried back to Richmond.

One

By the next morning (Sunday, April 14) the news of the close of the bombardment and capitulation of Sumter was in Washington. In the forenoon, at the time Anderson and his garrison were evacuating the fort, Lincoln and his Cabinet, together with sundry military officers, were at the Executive Mansion, giving final shape to the details of the action the