departments under different commanders.  Each commander was instructed to declare his blockade in force as soon as he felt able to make it tolerably effective, with the expectation of rapidly improving its efficiency.  The beginning was, therefore, ragged, and was naturally criticised in a very jealous and hostile spirit by those foreign nations who suffered by it.  Dangerous disputes threatened to arise, but were fortunately escaped, and in a surprisingly short time “Yankee” enterprise made the blockade too thorough for question.

Amid the first haste and pressure it was ingeniously suggested that, since the government claimed jurisdiction over the whole country and recognized only a rebellion strictly so called, therefore the President could by proclamation simply close ports at will.  Secretary Welles favored this course, and in the extra session of the summer of 1861 Congress passed a bill giving authority to Mr. Lincoln to pursue it, in his discretion.  Mr. Seward, with better judgment, said that it might be legal, but would certainly be unwise.  The position probably could have been successfully maintained by lawyers before a bench of judges; but to have relied upon it in the teeth of the commercial interests and unfriendly sentiment of England and France would have been a fatal blunder.  Happily it was avoided; and the President had the shrewdness to keep within a line which shut out technical discussion.  Already he saw that, so far as relations with foreigners were concerned, the domestic theory of a rebellion, pure and simple, must be very greatly modified.  In a word, that which began as rebellion soon developed into civil war; the two were closely akin, but with some important differences.

Nice points of domestic constitutional law also arose with the first necessity for action, opening the broad question as to what course should be pursued in doubtful cases, and worse still in those cases where the government could not fairly claim the benefit of a real doubt.  The plain truth was that, in a condition faintly contemplated in the Constitution, many things not permitted by the Constitution must be done to preserve the Constitution.  The present crisis had been very scantily and vaguely provided for by “the fathers.”  The instant that action became necessary to save the Union under the Constitution, it was perfectly obvious that the Constitution must be stretched, transcended, and most liberally interlined, in a fashion which would furnish annoying arguments to the disaffected.  The President looked over the situation, and decided, in the proverbial phrase, to take the bull by the horns; that which clearly ought to be done he would do, law or no law, doubt or no doubt.  He would have faith that the people would sustain him; and that the courts and the lawyers, among whose functions it is to see to it that laws and statutes do not interfere too seriously with the convenience of the community, would arrive, in what subtle and roundabout way they might