to find generals who could command popular confidence and also win battles. This was not an easy task. The larger number of the men who appeared to be available were not skilled in military tactics and strategy; they had had very little experience in real war. Of the veterans of the war with Mexico, General Scott and General Wool were now well advanced in years. The abilities of the younger graduates of the Military Academy at West Point had not yet been developed. Affairs were in a confused and chaotic condition.

Many men fresh from civil life were commissioned as major and brigadier generals. Some of these proved good soldiers, and many of them proved incompetent. The losses entailed by the preliminary trials and schooling of these civilian generals were doubtless very great. When McClellan, fresh from victorious fields, assumed command of the Army of the Potomac, in the summer of 1861, he found a fine body of men, fifty thousand in number, waiting for his organizing hand. Fresh levies of troops were pouring in, and before the year closed, his command was roughly estimated to contain about two hundred thousand men. As early as October 27, 1861, General McClellan's official reports to the Secretary of War showed that he had 147,695 men ready for duty; and the arriving levies almost immediately available would increase this number to 168,318. It must be said that the nucleus of this great army was gathered by Lincoln, who, as Commander-inChief of the Army and Navy of the United States, had strained his authority to the utmost to collect a

force for the defence of the capital and to serve as a framework on which should be organized a large and aggressive fighting army.

His general plan, adopted after much anxious consultation with his most trusted advisers, was as follows: To blockade the entire coast-line of the Rebel States; to acquire military occupation of the border States so as to protect Union men and repel invasion; to clear the Mississippi River of Rebel obstructions, thus dividing the Rebel Confederacy and relieving the West, which was deprived of its natural outlet to the sea; to destroy the Rebel army between Washington and Richmond and capture the Rebel capital. This vast plan had been formed in the mind of Lincoln by the very necessities of the situation. It was considered and brooded over while preparations for its execution were being made, and while the great questions of the emancipation of the slaves and the confiscation of Rebel property were also under consideration. If we remember that at this time, also, the foreign relations of the Government were strained, and that the financial resources were severely taxed, we shall have some notion of the prodigious cares that weighed down the man who, far into the morning watch, walked the lonely corridors of the White House, thinking, thinking, while others slept.

Early in November, General Scott, who held the highest command in the army of the United States, having been offended by General McClellan, asked to be relieved from active duty, and placed on the retired list. His request was granted; and Lincoln, accompanied by the members of his Cabinet, visited

the old veteran at his mansion in Washington, and presented to him, in person, a most affectionate and generous farewell address. Subsequently, in a message to Congress, Lincoln dwelt with warm praise on the services that General Scott had rendered to the country, expressing his belief that, whatever could be done to reward him, the nation would still be in debt to General Scott. McClellan was now in supreme command.

Naturally, Lincoln, being a Western man, felt the supreme necessity for the speedy opening of the Mississippi River. The strongest and most numerous opponents of the war were in the West, and their complaints of the hardships entailed on the people, in consequence of the prolonged hostilities, seemed to have more influence than in the Eastern States, where those hardships were less perceptible-perhaps less real. Lincoln's anxiety was not very well appreciated by the Eastern people, or by the generals and politicians that thronged in Washington. When, in course of time, the river was opened, the elation of the President showed itself in many odd expressions. He gloried in the fact that "the Father of Waters went unvexed to the sea." And, in a message to Congress, greatly to the scandal of some of the more fastidious of his friends, he referred to the gunboats on the Mississippi as "Uncle Sam's webfeet," that went whither they chose. But, as yet, all this was unaccomplished.

In pursuance of his programme, General U. S. Grant, then rising somewhat in the popular esteem, attacked and destroyed Belmont, a military depot of

the Rebels, in Missouri; General Garfield defeated Humphrey Marshall at Middle Creek, Kentucky, and General George H. Thomas defeated Generals Zollikoffer and Crittenden at Mill Spring, in the same State. These victories did much to hem the Rebels within the lines of the so-called seceded States, and also crippled them much. This was followed up by the capture of Fort Henry, on the Tennessee, and Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River. These streams, emptying into the Ohio River, were very necessary to help in military operations against the southwestern Rebel States. The forts were taken and the rivers cleared by General Grant, commanding the land forces, and Admiral Foote, in command of a fleet of "Uncle Sam's web-feet." Fort Donelson was commanded by the Rebel Generals Buckner and Floyd, the latter being the same traitor who, as Secretary of War, had done his best to hamper the Government while he yet held office under President Buchanan. The Rebel generals asked Grant for a parley to settle terms of surrender. To this Grant replied: "No terms except unconditional surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately on your works." This gave Grant his popular title of "Unconditional Surrender Grant." The Rebels did not wait. Floyd, conscious of the darkness of his guilt, fled in the night with a small force. Buckner surrendered twelve thousand prisoners of war and much material for fighting.

This was in February, 1862. Kentucky was now cleared of Rebels, and Tennessee was opened to the occupation of the Federal forces. Early in March,

Gen. S. R. Curtis fought the battle of Pea Ridge, and the Union flag was once more floating in the State of Arkansas. A few days later, General John Pope moved down the valley of the Mississippi, and, by a series of successes, yet further broke the armed opposition to the progress of the Federal army and the gunboats. On the 6th of April, 1862, was fought the great and terrible battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburgh Landing, in which the carnage on both sides was awful, and many brave and distinguished officers, including General Albert Sidney Johnston, the Rebel commander, were killed. The defeated

Rebels were sent flying to their fortified line at Corinth, Miss., where they were attacked by General Halleck, driven out, and compelled to retreat, leaving behind them, in their precipitate flight, a vast accumulation of military stores. Thus, by the end of May, 1862, the Rebels saw Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee torn from their grasp, and the United States flag floating once more over these recovered States.

That part of the programme which required the blockade and occupation of the Atlantic ports of the Rebel States was not overlooked meanwhile. During the months of March and April, 1862, Roanoke Island, N. C., was captured with great stores of arms and ammunition and many prisoners by Admiral Goldsborough and General Burnside. Newbern, N. C., fell next, and Fort Pulaski and Fort Macon, on the same coast-line, soon followed in surrender. In the autumn of 1861, an expedition under General B. F. Butler landed at Ship Island, in the Gulf of