scenery as we drove through the woods below Arlington" delighted
him. And then about nine o'clock his thoughts abandoned the scenery.
Through those beautiful Virginia woods came the distant roar of cannon.

At the White House that day there was little if any alarm. Reports
received at various times were construed by military men as favorable.
These, with the rooted preconception that the army had to be successful,
established confidence in a victory before nightfall. Late in the
afternoon, the President relieved his tension by taking a drive. He had
not returned when, about six o'clock, Seward appeared and asked hoarsely
where he was. The secretaries told him. He begged them to find the
President as quickly as possible. "Tell no one," said he, "but the
battle is lost. The army is in full retreat."

The news of the rout at Bull Run did not spread through Washington until
close to midnight. It caused an instantaneous panic. In the small hours,
the space before the Treasury was "a moving mass of humanity. Every
man seemed to be asking every man he met for the latest news, while all
sorts of rumors filled the air. A feeling of mingled horror and despair
appeared to possess everybody. . . . Our soldiers came straggling into
the city covered with dust and many of them wounded, while the panic
that led to the disaster spread like a contagion through all classes."
The President did not share the panic. He "received the news quietly
and without any visible sign of perturbation or excitement"'(10) Now
appeared in him the quality which led Herndon to call him a fatalist.
All night long he sat unruffled in his office, while refugees from
the stricken field--especially those overconfident Senators and
Representatives who had gone out to watch the overthrow of the
Confederates--poured into his ears their various and conflicting
accounts of the catastrophe. During that long night Lincoln said almost
nothing. Meanwhile, fragments of the routed army continued to stream
into the city. At dawn the next day Washington was possessed by a swarm
of demoralized soldiers while a dreary rain settled over it.

The silent man in the White House had forgotten for the moment his
dependence upon his advisers. While the runaway Senators were talking
themselves out, while the rain was sheeting up the city, he had
reached two conclusions. Early in the morning, he formulated both. One
conclusion was a general outline for the conduct of a long war in whi