trable wall between him and freedom. Who had any right now to expect the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, and who had any right or disposition to want to execute it? Thousands now flocked across the vast Free-State border, and no record of them was even taken which would aid in returning them to slavery. Where one escaped in time of loyal peace, hundreds now went, never to be returned. It appears that from 1840 to 1850 but one thousand and eleven slaves escaped into freedom from all the Slave States; and from 1850 to 1860, only eight hundred and three, notwithstanding the constant political turmoil on the subject of the abuse of the fugitive law in the North, and the everlasting cry from the South of the impossibility of her holding and perpetuating her rights (negroes) in the Union. How was the case now?

General Butler's name was so connected with this "contraband" question from the outset of the war almost, that it would have lived in its history had he never lived to bear the distinction of "Beast Butler" at New Orleans. Although he was not an able and successful military chief, as an ingenious and skillful political general his record was unique and exceedingly interesting, and from the day he entered Maryland to the end he kept the rebels in mind of his power and enmity to their purposes. In proportion to their hatred of him, did he grow in the favor of his Northern friends.

CHAPTER IV.

1861-WAR OF THE REBELLION-PROGRESS OF THE REBELS AT HOME AND ABROAD-MCCLELLAN AT THE HEAD OF THE UNION ARMY-" ALL QUIET ON THE POTOMAC”— ROSECRANS IN WEST VIRGINIA-LYON AND FREMONT IN MISSOURI-BATTLE OF WILSON'S CREEK-THE SECRETARY OF WAR IN MISSOURI-THE BODY-GUARD.

N the day of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Jefferson Davis called the rebel leaders to assemble again at Montgomery, towards the last of the same month. The insurrection had now, as far as possible, assumed the form of a regularly executed government. Mr. Davis's message to the legislative body at this time was a singular mixture of artful misrepresentations, but on the whole the most complete presentation of his side from the well-known Southern point of view. His main arguments were that the Government of the United States had declared war against the seceding States because one of them had fired on and captured Fort Sumter; that the seceding States were only exercising their "reserved rights;" that government by the majorities was a fallacy; and, above all, the most foolish thing ever uttered under pretentious circumstances, that "All we ask is to be let alone." And one of Mr. Davis's biographers, with childish simplicity,

says that in this message Mr. Davis actually "established the doctrine of secession." That was a doctrine which could only be established by the sword and bayonet and not by the power of the tongue, and nobody believed otherwise in America or Europe except the rebels in the South and their sympathizers wherever they were found. That many of them held to the doctrine as a mere pretense, there can be no doubt. Those who did entertain it, with few exceptions, abandoned it, and no false doctrine was ever more completely and eternally annihilated than was this in the downfall of the Rebellion. The puerility with which Jefferson Davis yet seems to hold to it is pitiable in the extreme.

On the 21st of May the "Congress" decided that the next session of that body should be held in Richmond, Virginia, beginning on the 20th of the following month.

This removal of the government seat was at first opposed by Mr. Davis, as it was also by many of the Gulf-State leaders. But the Virginia authorities had made this removal a condition of the secession of that State, and there was no apparent alternative. In the Union, Virginia was only satisfied in being first, and well the Cotton State kings knew that she would expect to take this place in the "new government." In the Gulf States, at least, there was, probably, no thought that Richmond should remain the permanent seat of the government, if there ever should be one; and the capture of Richmond without the defeat and destruction of a great rebel army

would have been an event of no great political or military significance at any time during the war.

Not until the 22d of February, 1862, was Mr. Davis inaugurated as permanent chief of the Rebellion, the permanent "Congress," as it was termed, having assembled the first time four days previously.

The opponents of the location of the seat of government at Richmond were not, perhaps, justified in any of their objections to the removal from Montgomery, and doubtlessly saw afterwards that they had been unwise. That Mr. Jefferson Davis did so is quite certain. The rebel capital was throughout the war a matter of little or no importance only so far as it could be of the greatest possible advantage to the rebels themselves in conducting their military operations. Military success was "everything" with them. There could have been little moral or political loss to them in the loss of anything but victory in battle. The selection of Richmond as the capital aided materially in securing the earnest co-operation. of a people who desired, if not deserved also, to be the first defenders and sufferers in a bad cause, and removed the power back of the army to the immediate neighborhood of the leading acts in the drama. The location of their capital at Richmond must doubtless be placed among the wise acts of the rebel leaders.

The early enthusiasm of the South was at this period somewhat broken by the unfavorable progress of events during the fall and winter, to some extent, as well as by a very wide-spread dissatisfaction with

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the conduct of the managers at Richmond But the Congress" held its sessions mainly in secret, and the reins were constantly tightened in the hands of the leaders. Until the battle of Bull Run, the South still hoped, against the most open dictates of common sense, to be let alone.

"Jefferson Davis signed the order for the reduction of Fort Sumter, but he did not thereby invoke the calamity of war. That act was simply the patriot's defiance to the menace of tyranny." Were not the history of the Rebellion as written by its defenders and actors filled with such wordy nonsense, this singular expression from one of Mr. Davis's biographers might be given the place of honor in all the annals of stupidity. But the writer of plain matter-of-fact history can well afford to "let alone these mad apologists of the "Lost Cause."

As the reins were tighter drawn at Richmond the dream of "State sovereignty" faded away. To prove and maintain secession became a stupendous undertaking, and the great mass of the people were disappointed. But those who had begun the work were not to be turned by complaints. A conscription law was now enacted, taking all men not disabled between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. And so the States were stripped, and the will of the few or the one at Richmond was found to be supreme. Still another and more sweeping conscription act followed, and compulsion took the place of volunteer enthusiasm. The rebel "Congress" kept pace with the will of the executive, and as the measures of the National