ting, day after day, for relief from the North which
he hoped would speedily come by sea. Outwardly he maintained his
self-control. But once, on the afternoon of the 23d, the business of
the day being over, the Executive office being deserted, after walking
the floor alone in silent thought for nearly half an hour, he stopped
and gazed long and wistfully out of the window down the Potomac in the
direction of the expected ships; 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!"

During these days of isolation, when Washington, with the telegraph
inoperative, was kept in an appalling uncertainty, the North rose.
There was literally a rush to volunteer. "The heather is on fire," wrote
George Ticknor, "I never before knew what a popular excitement can
be." As fast as possible militia were hurried South. The crack New York
regiment, the famous, dandified Seventh, started for the front amid
probably the most tempestuous ovation which until that time was ever
given to a military organization in America. Of the march of the
regiment down Broadway, one of its members wrote, "Only one who passed
as we did, through the tempest of cheers two miles long, can know the
terrible enthusiasm of the occasion."

To reach Washington by rail was impossible. The Seventh went by boat
to Annapolis. The same course was taken by a regiment of Massachusetts
mechanics, the Eighth. Landing at Annapolis, the two regiments, dandies
and laborers, fraternized at once in the common bond of loyalty to the
Union. A branch railway led from Annapolis to the main line between
Washington and Baltimore. The rails had been torn up. The Massachusetts
mechanics set to work to relay them. The Governor of Maryland protested.
He was disregarded. The two regiments toiled together a long day and
through the night following, between Annapolis and the Washington
junction, bringing on their baggage and cannon over relaid tracks.
There, a train was found which the Seventh appropriated. At noon, on
the 25th of April, that advance guard of the Northern hosts entered
Washington, and Lincoln knew that he had armies behind him.

CHAPTER VII. LINCOLN

The history of the North had virtually become, by April, 1861, the
history of Lincoln himself, and during the remaining four years of the
President's life it is difficult to separate his personality from the