that unnecessary recourse should be had to martial law.  Naturally, however, one of his generals summarily arrested a Southern recruiting agent in Baltimore.  The ordinary law would probably have sufficed, and Lincoln is believed to have regretted this action, but it was obvious that he must support it when done.  Hence arose an occasion for the old Chief Justice Taney to make a protest on behalf of legality, to which the President, who had armed force on his side, could not give way, and thus early began a controversy to which we must recur.  It was gravely urged upon Lincoln that he should forcibly prevent the Legislature of Maryland from holding a formal sitting; he refused on the sensible ground that the legislators could assemble in some way and had better not assemble with a real grievance in constitutional law.  Then a strange alteration came over Baltimore.  Within three weeks all active demonstration in favour of the South had subsided; the disaffected Legislature resolved upon neutrality; the Governor, loyal at heart—­if the brief epithet loyal may pass, as not begging any profound legal question—­carried on affairs in the interest of the Union; postal communication and the passage of troops were free from interruption by the middle of May; and the pressing alarm about Maryland was over.  These incidents of the first days of war have been recounted in some detail, because they may illustrate the gravity of the issue in the border States, in others of which the struggle, though further removed from observation, lasted longer; and because, too, it is well to realise the stress of agitation under which the Government had to make far-reaching preparation for a larger struggle, while Lincoln, whose will was decisive in all these measures, carried on all the while that seemingly unimportant routine of a President’s life which is in the quietest times exacting.

The alarm in Washington was only transitory, and it was generally supposed in the North that insurrection would be easily put down.  Some even specified the number of days necessary, agreeably fixing upon a smaller number than the ninety days for which the militia were called out.  Secretary Seward has been credited with language of this kind, and even General Scott, whose political judgment was feeble, though his military judgment was sound, seems at first to have rejected proposals, for example, for drilling irregular cavalry, made in the expectation of a war of some length.  There is evidence that neither Lincoln nor Cameron, the Secretary of War, indulged in these pleasant fancies.  Irresistible public opinion, in the East especially, demanded to see prompt activity.  The North had arisen in its might; it was for the Administration to put forth that might, capture Richmond, to which the Confederate Government had moved, and therewith make an end of rebellion.  The truth was that the North had to make its army before it could wisely advance into the assured territory