Nominally, he was a student of law in the office of Lincoln and Herndon, but in effect he passed his time in completing his plans of militia reform.  He made in October many stirring and earnest speeches for the Republican candidates.  He was very popular among the country people.  His voice was magnificent in melody and volume, his command of language wonderful in view of the deficiencies of his early education, his humor inexhaustible and hearty, and his manner deliberate and impressive, reminding his audiences in Central Illinois of the earliest and best days of Senator Douglas.

When the Legislature met, he prepared an elaborate military bill, the adoption of which would have placed the State in an enviable attitude of defence.  The stupid jealousy of colonels and majors who had won bloodless glory, on both sides, in the Mormon War, and the malignant prejudice instigated by the covert treason that lurked in Southern Illinois, succeeded in staving off the passage of the bill, until it was lost by the expiration of the term.  Many of these men are now in the ranks, shouting the name of Ellsworth as a battle-cry.

He came to Washington in the escort of the President elect.  Hitherto he had been utterly independent of external aid.  The time was come when he must wait for the cooperation of others, for the accomplishment of his life’s great purpose.  He wished a position in the War Department, which would give him an opportunity for the establishment of the Militia Bureau.  He was a strange anomaly at the capital.  He did not care for money or luxury.  Though sensitive in regard to his reputation, for the honor of his work, his motto always was that of the sage Merlin,—­“I follow use, not fame.”  An office-seeker of this kind was an eccentric and suspicious personage.  The hungry thousands that crowded and pushed at Willard’s thought him one of them, only deeper and slier.  The simplicity and directness of his character, his quick sympathy and thoughtless generosity, and his delicate sense of honor unfitted him for such a scramble as that which degrades the quadrennial rotations of our Departments.  He withdrew from the contest for the position he desired, and the President, who loved him like a younger brother, made him a lieutenant in the army, intending to detail him for special service.

The jealousy of the staff-officers of the regular army, who always discover in any effective scheme of militia reform the overthrow of their power, and who saw in the young Zouave the promise of brilliant and successful innovation, was productive of very serious annoyance and impediment to Ellsworth.  In the midst of this, he fell sick at Willard’s.  While he lay there, the news from the South began to show that the rebels were determined upon war, and the rumors on the street said that a wholesome North-westerly breeze was blowing from the Executive Mansion.  These indications were more salutary to Ellsworth than any medicine.  We were talking one night of