point. This is now our situation.

If McDowell's force was now beyond our reach, we should be utterly
helpless. Apprehension of something like this, and no unwillingness to
sustain you, has always been my reason for withholding McDowell's force
from you. Please understand this, and do the best you can with the force
you have.

A. LINCOLN.

HISTORY OF CONSPIRACY OF REBELLION

MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

MAY 16, 1862

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

The insurrection which is yet existing in the United States and aims at
the overthrow of the Federal Constitution and the Union, was clandestinely
prepared during the Winter of 1860 and 1861, and assumed an open
organization in the form of a treasonable provisional government at
Montgomery, in Alabama on the 18th day of February, 1861. On the 12th day
of April, 1861, the insurgents committed the flagrant act of civil war by
the bombardment and the capture of Fort Sumter, Which cut off the hope of
immediate conciliation. Immediately afterward all the roads and avenues to
this city were obstructed, and the capital was put into the condition of
a siege. The mails in every direction were stopped and the lines of
telegraph cut off by the insurgents, and military and naval forces which
had been called out by the government for the defense of Washington were
prevented from reaching the city by organized and combined treasonable
resistance in the State of Maryland. There was no adequate and effective
organization for the public defense. Congress had indefinitely adjourned.
There was no time to convene them. It became necessary for me to choose
whether, using only the existing means, agencies, and processes which
Congress had provided, I should let the government fall at once into
ruin or whether, availing myself of the broader powers conferred by the
Constitution in cases of insurrection, I would make an effort to save it,
with all its blessings, for the present age and for posterity.

I thereupon summoned my constitutional advisers, the heads of all the
departments, to meet on Sunday, the 20th day of April, 1861, at the
office of the Navy Department, and then and there, with their unanimous
concurrence, I directed that an armed revenue cutter should proceed to
sea to afford protection to the commercial marine, and especially the
California treasure ships then on their way to this coast. I also directed
the commandant of the navy-yard at Boston to purchase or c