n
both sides. A deputation from many churches in that city came to the
President, begging him to desist from his bloodthirsty preparations,
but found him "constitutionally genial and jovial," and "wholly
inaccessible to Christian appeals." It mattered more that a majority
of the Maryland Legislature was for the South, and that the Governor
temporised and requested that no more troops should pass through
Baltimore. The Mayor of Baltimore and the railway authorities burned
railway bridges and tore up railway lines, and the telegraph wires were
cut. Thus for about five days the direct route to Washington from the
North was barred. It seemed as if the boast of some Southern orator
that the Confederate flag would float over the capital by May 1 might
be fulfilled. Beauregard could have transported his now drilled troops
by rail from South Carolina and would have found Washington isolated
and hardly garrisoned. As a matter of fact, no such daring move was
contemplated in the South, and the citizens of Richmond, Virginia, were
themselves under a similar alarm; but the South had a real opportunity.

The fall of Washington at that moment would have had political
consequences which no one realised better than Lincoln. It might well
have led the Unionists in the border States to despair, and there is
evidence that even then he so fully realised the task which lay before
the North as to feel that the loss of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri
would have made it impossible. He was at heart intensely anxious, and
quaintly and injudiciously relieved his feelings by the remark to the
"6th Massachusetts" that he felt as if all other help were a dream, and
they were "the only real thing." Yet those who were with him testify
to his composure and to the vigour with which he concerted with his
Cabinet the various measures of naval, military, financial, postal, and
police preparation which the occasion required, but which need not here
be detailed. Many of the measures of course lay outside the powers
which Congress had conferred on the public departments, but the
President had no hesitation in "availing himself," as he put it, "of
the broader powers conferred by the Constitution in cases of
insurrection," and looking for the sanction of Congress afterwards,
rather than "let the Government at once fall into ruin." The
difficulties of government were greatly aggravated by the uncertainty
as to which of its servants, civil, naval, or