ssociates; but the greatest honor, and most important
fact of all, is the unanimous firmness of the common soldiers and
common sailors. To the last man, so far as known, they have
successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose
commands but an hour before they obeyed as absolute law. This is
the patriotic instinct of plain people. They understand, without an
argument, that destroying the Government which was made by
Washington means no good to them. Our popular Government has often
been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already
settled--the successful establishing and the successful
administering of it. One still remains--its successful maintenance
against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now
for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly
carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are
the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when
ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no
successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful
appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such
will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot
take by an election, neither can they take by a war; teaching all
the folly of being the beginners of a war.

Through the early summer of 1861 Washington was alive with preparations
for a military movement against the enemy in Virginia. Troops from the
North were constantly arriving, and as rapidly as possible were assigned
to different organizations and drilled in the art of war. "Few
comparatively know or can appreciate the actual condition of things and
the state of feeling of the members of the Administration in those
days," says Secretary Welles. "Nearly sixty years of peace had unfitted
us for any war; but the most terrible of all wars, a civil war, was upon
us, and it had to be met. Congress had adjourned without making any
provision for the storm, though aware it was at hand and soon to burst
upon the country. A new Administration, its members scarcely acquainted
with each other, and differing essentially in the past, was compelled to
act, promptly and decisively." The burden upon the President began to
grow tremendous; but he did not shrink or falter.

Upon his back a more than Atlas-load,
The burden of the Co