understand," asked General Scott, "that the regiments report as they come here to the Honorable Secretary of State?"

"No, no," said Mr. Cameron, who wished to arrest or soften a painful interview. "General McClellan is not to blame; it is Seward's work. He is constantly meddling with what is none of his business, and (alluding to the Pickens expedition) makes mischief in the war and navy departments by his interference."

There was in the manner more than in the words a playful sarcasm which Seward felt and the President evidently enjoyed. General McClellan stood by the open door with one hand raised and holding it, a good deal embarrassed. He said he had intended no discourtesy to General Scott, but he had been so incessantly occupied in organizing and placing the army, receiving and mustering in the recruits as they arrived, and attending to what was absolutely indispensable, that it might seem he omitted some matters of duty, but he should extremely regret if it was supposed he had been guilty of any disrespect.

"You are too intelligent and too good a disciplinarian not to know your duties and the proprieties of military intercourse," said General Scott; "but seem to have misapprehended your right position. I, you must understand, am General-in-Chief. You are my chief of staff. When I brought you here you had my confidence and friendship. I do not say that you have yet entirely lost my confidence. Good day, General McClellan."

A few weeks later General Scott was on his own application placed upon the retired list, and General McClellan became his successor. Disaffection on the part of any of the officers, if any existed, did not immediately show itself; the army and people witnessed with pride the prompt and wonderful reorganization that had taken place, and for a time exulted in the promised efficiency and capabilities of the "young Napoleon." But the autumn passed away in grand reviews and showy parades, where the young General appeared with a numerous staff composed of wealthy young gentlemen, inexperienced, untrained, and unacquainted with military duty, who as well as foreign princes had volunteered their services. Parades and reviews were not useless, and the committal of wealthy and influential citizens who were placed upon his staff had its advantages; but as time wore on and no blow was struck or any decisive movement attempted, complaints became numerous and envy and jealousy found opportunity to be heard.

The expectation that the rebellion would be suppressed in ninety days, and that an undisciplined force of seventy-five thousand men or even five times that number would march to Richmond, clear the banks of the Mississippi, capture New Orleans, and overwhelm the whole South, had given way to more reasonable and rational views before Congress convened at the regular session in December. Still the slow progress that was made by the Union armies, and the immense war expenditures, to which our country was then unaccustomed, caused uneasiness with the people, and furnished food and excitement for the factions in Congress.

The anti-slavery feeling was increasing, but efforts to effect emancipation were not controlling sentiments of the Administration or of a majority of Congress at the commencement or during the first year of Mr. Lincoln's term, although such are the representations of party writers, and to some extent of the historians of the period. Nor did the Administration, as is often asserted and by many believed, commence hostilities and make aggressive war on the slave States or their institutions; but when war began and a national garrison in a national fortress was attacked, it did not fail to put forth its power and energies to suppress the rebellion and maintain the integrity of the Union. Military delays and tardy movements were nevertheless charged to the imbecility of the Government. It is not to be denied that a portion of the most active supporters of the President in and out of Congress and in the armies had in view ulterior purposes than that of suppressing the insurrection. Some were determined to avail themselves of the opportunity to abolish slavery, others to extinguish the claim of reserved sovereignty to the States, and a portion were favorable to both of these extremes and to the consolidation of power in the central Government; but a larger number than either and perhaps more than all combined were for maintaining the Constitution and Union unimpaired.

The President, while opposed to all innovating schemes, had the happy faculty of so far harmonizing and reconciling his differing friends as to keep them united in resisting the secession movement.

Abraham Lincoln was in many respects a remarkable man, never while living fully understood or appreciated. An uncultured child of the frontiers, with no educational advantages, isolated in youth in his wilderness home, with few associates and without family traditions, he knew not his own lineage and connections. Nor was this singular in the then condition of unsettled frontier life. His grandfather, with Daniel Boone, left the settled part of Virginia, crossed the Alleghany mountains, penetrated the "dark and bloody ground," and took up his residence in the wilds of Kentucky near the close of the Revolutionary war. There was little intercourse with each other in the new and scattered settlements destitute of roads and with no mail facilities for communication with relatives, friends, and the civilized world east of the mountains. Abraham Lincoln, the grandfather of the President, was a nephew of Daniel Boone, and partook of the spirit of his brave and subsequently famous relative. But his residence in his secluded home was brief. He was killed by the Indians when his son Thomas, the father of President Lincoln, was only six years old. Four years later the fatherless boy lost his mother. Left an orphan, this neglected child, without kith or kindred for whom he cared or who cared for him, led a careless, thriftless life, became a wandering pioneer, emigrated from Kentucky when the President was but seven years old, took up his residence for several years in the remote solitudes of Indiana, and drifted at a later day to Illinois. This vagrant life, by a shiftless father, and without a mother or female relative to keep alive and impress upon him the pedigree and traditions of his family, left the President without definite knowledge of his origin and that of his fathers. The deprivation he keenly felt. I heard him say on more than one occasion that when he laid down his official life he would endeavor to trace out his genealogy and family history. He had a vague impression that his family had emigrated from England to Pennsylvania and thence to Virginia; but, as he remarked in my presence to Mr. Ashmun of Massachusetts, and afterward to Governor Andrew, there was not, he thought, any immediate connection with the families of the same name in Massachusetts, though there was reason to suppose they had a common ancestry.

Having entered upon this subject, and already said more than was anticipated at the commencment, the opportunity is fitting to introduce extracts from a statement made by himself and to accompany it with other facts which have come into my possession since his death—facts of which he had no knowledge.

In a brief autobiographical sketch of his life, written by himself, he says: