became a rebel camp of instruction.  Afterward, as Major-General Patterson collected his Pennsylvania quota, he turned it toward that point as a probable field of operations.  As a mere town, Harper’s Ferry was unimportant; but, lying on the Potomac, and being at the head of the great Shenandoah valley, down which not only a good turnpike, but also an effective railroad ran southeastward to the very heart of the Confederacy, it was, and remained through the entire war, a strategical line of the first importance, protected, as the Shenandoah valley was, by the main chain of the Alleghanies on the west and the Blue Ridge on the east.

A part of the eastern quotas had also been hurried to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, lying at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, which became and continued an important base for naval as well as military operations.  In the West, even more important than St. Louis was the little town of Cairo, lying at the extreme southern end of the State of Illinois, at the confluence of the Ohio River with the Mississippi.  Commanding, as it did, thousands of miles of river navigation in three different directions, and being also the southernmost point of the earliest military frontier, it had been the first care of General Scott to occupy it; and, indeed, it proved itself to be the military key of the whole Mississippi valley.

It was not an easy thing promptly to develop a military policy for the suppression of the rebellion.  The so-called Confederate States of America covered a military field having more than six times the area of Great Britain, with a coast-line of over thirty-five hundred miles, and an interior frontier of over seven thousand miles.  Much less was it possible promptly to plan and set on foot concise military campaigns to reduce the insurgent States to allegiance.  Even the great military genius of General Scott was unable to do more than suggest a vague outline for the work.  The problem was not only too vast, but as yet too indefinite, since the political future of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri still hung in more or less uncertainty.

The passive and negligent attitude which the Buchanan administration had maintained toward the insurrection during the whole three months between the presidential election and Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration, gave the rebellion an immense advantage in the courts and cabinets of Europe.  Until within three days of the end of Buchanan’s term not a word of protest or even explanation was sent to counteract the impression that disunion was likely to become permanent.  Indeed, the non-coercion doctrine of Buchanan’s message was, in the eyes of European statesmen, equivalent to an acknowledgment of such a result; and the formation of the Confederate government, followed so quickly by the fall of Fort Sumter, seemed to them a practical realization of their forecast.  The course of events appeared not merely to fulfil their expectations, but also, in the case of England and France, gratified their eager hopes.  To England it promised cheap cotton and free trade with the South.  To France it appeared to open the way for colonial ambitions which Napoleon III so soon set on foot on an imperial scale.