nessee had as yet won the places they were yet to оссиру. Western journals remarked, however, that the fighting done in the Mississippi Valley was carried on, apparently, to bring out new generals for commands in the East, and at the end of the war there seemed to be some point in the assertion, considering what was done with Halleck, Pope, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan.

There were increasing reasons why the command of the Army of the Potomac could not longer be left, unreservedly, in the hands of General McClellan. The vigorous effort made, politically, to shift all blame from his shoulders to those of the President, rendered it impossible to yield to his demands without in a manner confessing the justice of the accusations so loudly uttered and repeated by the opposition journals and echoed derisively in Europe. It was determined to abandon for the present the Peninsular operations, and to withdraw the Army of the Potomac, and the process of withdrawal offered an apparent means for diminishing the position of General McClellan without so direct a removal as should do manifest injustice and place the Administration in a false light.

The attempt to bring the military power into better subordination to the civil began in July, by the appointment of Major-General Henry W. Halleck to the hitherto unknown post of general-in-chief. He was really made the military adviser of the President and the Secretary of War. In the latter office Mr. Cameron had already been succeeded by Edwin M. Stanton.

There were many perplexities in the question as to who should succeed to the command of the

Army of the Potomac. Its own corps commanders were capable officers, but not one of them stood sufficiently above the rest in acknowledged capacity, and they were severally averse to accepting what was plainly a perilous distinction.

An effort to reduce the difficulty was made, while the removal of the army from the Peninsula was in progress, by organizing what was called the Army of Virginia, and by placing it, July 26th, 1862, under Major-General John Pope, an officer of distinction and of proved capacity, whose services in the West had kept him away from the existing complications on the Potomac.

The Army of Virginia at first consisted mainly of the troops assigned to the defence of the Washington lines, and the several detachments of the old Army of the Potomac, on arrival, drifted into it under General Pope's command. He had no time, however, to get his resources well in hand before he was called upon to fight a series of severe engagements with the Confederate army under General Lee, set free from its previous duties before Richmond. The troops fought well, but there were serious reverses, ending with the bloody battle of Manassas on August 30th. There had been loud murmurs against what was deemed the Administration's unjust shelving of General McClellan, and it was openly asserted that some of his corps commanders, and even the men themselves, were more than willing to have General Pope defeated. The entire

subject was afterward sifted vigorously in the case of General Fitz-John Porter. Whether or not he or any other officer failed of doing his duty, the reported bad results of the battle of Manassas drew from a part of the army a plain demand for the restoration of General McClellan to the command in the field. He had superintended the transfer of his troops until August 24th, had then reported to General Halleck for orders, and on the 27th had made his headquarters at Alexandria, forwarding re-enforcements to General Pope. He had not been formally removed, but he and the nation well understood that he was, and for some time had been under a cloud.

The army was in better condition than many were willing to believe after the hard fighting under General Pope, and when General McClellan resumed command, September 2d, 1862, it took form readily once more as the Army of the Potomac. As the Army of Virginia disappeared in this manner, General Pope simply ceased to command it. He had served his country well, but the emergency left him temporarily without a command.

The day after General McClellan resumed the direction of operations, he received information that the Army of Northern Virginia, under General Lee, was about to cross the Potomac into Maryland. The crossing took place near Leesburg, on September 4th and 5th, and the Army of the Potomac, with its re-enforcements, at once pushed on up the river to meet once more its old antagonist.

The year 1862 had thus far been a time of unceas

ing trial to Abraham Lincoln. His heart had been terribly wrung in February by the sickness and death of his favorite child Willie. He had been compelled to turn from watching his dying child to consider matters of war and State, and to listen to the wail which went up from a host of mourners in every corner of the land. He better understood and more deeply felt the sorrows of others after his own bereavement, and he grew perceptibly older within a very few weeks. He could not but hear the voices continually raised against him in patriotic indignation or in unpatriotic denunciation, and he was fully aware that his administration must obtain moral as well as military successes, if it was to finally triumph. With a very manifest prudence, he was now watching for an opportunity to combine the two. His contest with General McClellan had not at any time been separated in his mind from his past and present and coming conflict with the conservative or pro-slavery sentiment which had selected the most prominent Union general for its political representative. Congress had strengthened his hands, having passed on March 13th and on July 16th, acts which gave permanent effect to General Butler's idea that escaped or captured slaves were "contraband of war.' Near the end of July, just after putting General Pope in command of the Army of Virginia, and hopeful of immediate victories sufficient for his next purposes, Mr. Lincoln summoned a special meeting of the Cabinet. He read to them the greatest State paper ever signed by a President of the United States as an act of

the Executive alone. It was the Proclamation of

Emancipation.

Mr. Seward, and others of the Cabinet, while fully approving of the measure, advised its postponement until the hoped-for victories should actually be obtained and reported, and to this the President readily assented.

During those same months a very different political movement had begun. So large a part of the most vigorous anti-slavery workers and voters were in the several columns and camps of the army as officers or privates, that the Republican Party was half-disorganized, and there were fears of defeat in the Autumnal elections. The Confederacy had received its most efficient primary help from secret organizations commonly described as one-the Knights of the Golden Circle-and these were still in great activity both at the North and South. Similar societies had a wide existence among the white and colored Union men of the South.

The idea was adopted on behalf of the nation, and the Union League of America was instituted in the Summer of 1862. It began with a central committee of twelve carefully selected men, called the permanent Grand Council, with power to summon Grand Councils of Delegates, to organize State Councils and Local Councils all over the land. plan and system spread like a prairie fire, and the League shortly became the bone and sinew of the Republican Party, and the political right arm of the Lincoln Administration.

The

In every city, and town, and hamlet, its member