ese gentlemen gave no security
and received no compensation, but "I am not aware," wrote Lincoln, at
a later day, "that a dollar of the public funds, thus confided,
without authority of law, to unofficial persons, was either lost or
wasted."[775]

[Footnote 775: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 552.]

The Union Square meeting appointed a Union Defence Committee to raise
money, provide supplies, and equip regiments. For the time this
committee became the executive arm of the national government in New
York, giving method to effort and concentrating the people's energies
for the highest efficiency. John A. Dix, who had seen sixteen years of
peace service in the regular army, equipped regiments and despatched
them to Washington, while James S. Wadsworth, a man without military
experience but of great public spirit, whose courage and energy
especially fitted him for the work, loaded steamboats with provisions
and accompanied them to Annapolis. Soon afterwards Dix became a
major-general of volunteers, while Wadsworth, eager for active
service, accepted an appointment on General McDowell's staff with the
rank of major. This took him to Manassas, and within a month gave him
a "baptism of fire" which distinguished him for coolness, high
courage, and great capacity. On August 9 he was made a brigadier-general
of volunteers, thus preceding in date of commission all other New
Yorkers of similar rank not graduates of West Point.

A few weeks later Daniel E. Sickles, no less famous in the political
arena, who was to win the highest renown as a fighter, received
similar rank. Sickles, at the age of twenty-two, began public life as
a member of the Assembly, and in the succeeding fourteen years served
as corporation attorney, secretary of legation at London, State
senator, and congressman. A Hunker in politics, an adept with the
revolver, and fearless in defence, he had the habit of doing his own
thinking. Tammany never had a stronger personality. He was not always
a successful leader and he cared little for party discipline, but as
an antagonist bent on having his own way his name had become a
household word in the metropolis and in conventions. In the
anti-slavery crusade his sympathies were Southern. He opposed Lincoln,
he favoured compromise, and he encouraged the cotton States to believe
in a divided North. Nevertheless, when the Union was assaulted, the
soldier spirit that made him major of the Twelfth National G