e. 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 1861 his 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 th