It has been truly said that the Americans are an unmilitary but an intensely warlike nation.Seward's belief that a war fury would sweep the country at the first cannon shot was amply justified.Both North and South appeared to rise as one man,crying fiercely to be led to battle.
The immediate effect on Washington had not been foreseen.That historic clash at Baltimore between the city's mob and the Sixth Massachusetts en route to the capital,was followed by an outburst of secession feeling in Maryland;by an attempt to isolate Washington from the North.Railway tracks were torn up;telegraph wires were cut.During several days Lincoln was entirely ignorant of what the North was doing.Was there an efficient general response to his call for troops?Or was precious time being squandered in preparation?Was it conceivable that the war fury was only talk?Looking forth from the White House,he was a prisoner of the horizon;an impenetrable mystery,it shut the capital in a ring of silence all but intolerable.Washington assumed the air of a beleaguered city.General Scott hastily drew in the small forces which the government had maintained in Maryland and Virginia.Government employees and loyal Washingtonians were armed and began to drill.The White House became a barracks.
"Jim Lane,"writes delightful John Hay in his diary,which is always cool,rippling,sunny,no matter how acute the crisis,"Jim Lane marshalled his Kansas warriors today at Williard's;tonight (they are in)the East Room."[1]Hay's humor brightens the tragic hour.He felt it his duty to report to Lincoln a "yarn"that had been told to him by some charming women who had insisted on an interview;they had heard from "a dashing Virginian"that inside forty-eight hours something would happen which would ring through the world.The ladies thought this meant the capture or assassination of the President."Lincoln quietly grinned."But Hay who plainly enjoyed the episode,charming women and all,had got himself into trouble.He had to do "some very dexterous lying to calm the awakened fears of Mrs.Lincoln in regard to the assassination suspicion."Militia were quartered in the Capitol,and Pennsylvania Avenue was a drill ground.At the President's reception,the distinguished politician C.C.Clay,"wore with a sublimely unconscious air three pistols and an 'Arkansas toothpick,'and looked like an admirable vignette to twenty-five cents'worth of yellow covered romance."But Hay's levity was all of the surface.Beneath it was intense anxiety.General Scott reported that the Virginia militia,concentrating about Washington,were a formidable menace,though he thought he was strong enough to hold out until relief should come.As the days passed and nothing appeared upon that inscrutable horizon while the telegraph remained silent,Lincoln became moodily distressed.One afternoon,"the business of the day being over,the executive office deserted,after walking the floor alone in silent thought for nearly a half-hour,he stopped and gazed long and wistfully out of the window down the Potomac in the direction of the expected ships (bringing soldiers from New York);and unconscious of other presence in the room,at length broke out with irrepressible anguish in the repeated exclamation,'Why don't they come!Why don't they come!'"[2]
His unhappiness flashed into words while he was visiting those Massachusetts soldiers who had been wounded on their way to Washington."I don't believe there is any North..."he exclaimed."You are the only Northern realities."[3]But even then relief was at hand.The Seventh New York,which had marched down Broadway amid such an ovation as never before was given any regiment in America,had come by sea to Annapolis.
At noon on April twenty-fifth,it reached Washington bringing,along with the welcome sight of its own bayonets,the news that the North had risen,that thousands more were on the march.
Hay who met them at the depot went at once to report to Lincoln.Already the President had reacted to a "pleasant,hopeful mood."He began outlining a tentative plan of action:
blockade,maintenance of the safety of Washington,holding Fortress Monroe,and then to "go down to Charleston and pay her the little debt we are owing there."[4]But this was an undigested plan.It had little resemblance to any of his later plans.And immediately the chief difficulties that were to embarrass all his plans appeared.He was a minority President;and he was the Executive of a democracy.Many things were to happen;many mistakes were to be made;many times the piper was to be paid,ere Lincoln felt sufficiently sure of his support to enforce a policy of his own,defiant of opposition.Throughout the spring of 1861his imperative need was to secure the favor of the Northern mass,to shape his policy with that end in view.At least,in his own mind,this seemed to be his paramount obligation.And so it was in the minds of his advisers.Lincoln was still in the pliable mood which was his when he entered office,which continued to be in evidence,except for sudden momentary disappearances when a different Lincoln flashed an instant into view,until another year and more had gone by.Still he felt himself the apprentice hand painfully learning the trade of man of action.
Still he was deeply sensitive to advice.
