y 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 surfac