uncertainty about their attitude continued till the autumn of 1861, and while it lasted was an important element in Lincoln’s calculations. (It must be remembered that slavery existed in Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri.) In Missouri the strife of factions was fierce.  Already in January there had been reports of a conspiracy to seize the arsenal at St. Louis for the South when the time came, and General Scott had placed in command Captain Nathaniel Lyon, on whose loyalty he relied the more because he was an opponent of slavery.  The Governor was in favour of the South—­as was also the Legislature, and the Governor could count on some part of the State Militia; so Lincoln, when he called for volunteers, commissioned Lyon to raise them in Missouri.  In this task a Union State Committee in St. Louis greatly helped him, and the large German population in that city was especially ready to enlist for the Union.  Many of the German immigrants of those days had come to America partly for the sake of its free institutions.  A State Convention was summoned by the Governor to pass an Ordinance of Secession, but its electors were minded otherwise, and the Convention voted against secession.  In several encounters Lyon, who was an intrepid soldier, defeated the forces of the Governor; in June he took possession of the State capital, driving the Governor and Legislature away; the State Convention then again assembled and set up a Unionist Government for the State.  This new State Government was not everywhere acknowledged; conspiracies in the Southern interest continued to exist in Missouri; and the State was repeatedly molested by invasions, of no great military consequence, from Arkansas.  Indeed, in the autumn there was a serious recrudescence of trouble, in which Lyon lost his life.  But substantially Missouri was secured for the Union.  Naturally enough, a great many of the citizens of Missouri who had combined to save their State to the Union became among the strongest of the “Radicals” who will later engage our attention.  Many, however, of the leading men who had done most in this cause, including the friends of Blair, Lincoln’s Postmaster-General, adhered no less emphatically to the “Conservative” section of the Republicans.

2. Bull Run.

Thus, in the autumn of 1861, North and South had become solidified into something like two countries.  In the month of July, which now concerns us, this process was well on its way, but it is to be marked that the whole long tract of Kentucky still formed a neutral zone, which the Northern Government did not wish to harass, and which perhaps the South would have done well to let alone, while further west in Missouri the forces of the North were not even as fully organised as in the East.  So the only possible direction in which any great blow could be struck was the direction of Richmond, now the capital, and it might seem, therefore, the heart, of the Confederacy.  The Confederate Congress was to meet there on July