were to happen; many mistakes were to be made; many times the piper was to be paid, ere Lincoln felt sufficiently sure of his support to enforce a policy of his own, defiant of opposition.  Throughout the spring of 1861 his imperative need was to secure the favor of the Northern mass, to shape his policy with that end in view.  At least, in his own mind, this seemed to be his paramount obligation.  And so it was in the minds of his advisers.  Lincoln was still in the pliable mood which was his when he entered office, which continued to be in evidence, except for sudden momentary disappearances when a different Lincoln flashed an instant into view, until another year and more had gone by.  Still he felt himself the apprentice hand painfully learning the trade of man of action.  Still he was deeply sensitive to advice.

And what advice did the country give him?  There was one roaring shout dinning into his ears all round the Northern horizon-"On to Richmond!” Following Virginia’s secession, Richmond had become the Confederate capital.  It was expected that a session of the Confederate Congress would open at Richmond in July.  “On to Richmond!  Forward to Richmond!” screamed The Tribune.  “The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on the 20th of July.  By that date the place must be held by the national army.”  The Times advised the resignation of the Cabinet; it warned the President that if he did not give prompt satisfaction he would be superseded.  Though Lincoln laughed at the threat of The Times to “depose” him, he took very seriously all the swiftly accumulating evidence that the North was becoming rashly impatient Newspaper correspondents at Washington talked to his secretaries “impertinently."(5) Members of Congress, either carried away by the excitement of the hour or with slavish regard to the hysteria of their constituents, thronged to Washington clamoring for action.  On purely political grounds, if on no other, they demanded an immediate advance into Virginia.  Military men looked with irritation, if not with contempt, on all this intemperate popular fury.  That grim Sherman, who had been offended by Lincoln’s tone the month previous, put their feeling into words.  Declining the offer of a position in the War Department, he wrote that he wished “the Administration all success in its almost impossible task of governing this distracted and anarchial people."(6)

In the President’s councils, General Scott urged delay, and the gathering of the volunteers into camps of instruction, their deliberate transformation into a genuine army.  So inadequate were the resources of the government; so loose and uncertain were the militia organizations which were attempting to combine into an army; such discrepancies appeared between the nominal and actual strength of commands, between the places where men were supposed to be and the places where they actually were; that Lincoln in his droll way compared the process of mobilization to shoveling