jutant General.

While recognizing the great need of extending proper military protection
to the mail route, it must have been disheartening to Sumner and the
loyalists to see this force ordered into service outside the state. For
now, late in the summer of 1861, the time of national crisis--the
Californian trouble was approaching its climax. On July 20, the Union
army had been beaten at Bull Run and driven back, a rabble of fugitives,
into the panic stricken capital. Then came weeks and months of delay and
uncertainty while the overcautious McClellan sought to build up a new
military machine. The entire North was overspread with gloom; the
Confederates were jubilant and full of self-confidence. In California
the psychological situation was similar but even more acute, for
encouraged by Confederate success, the rebel faction became bolder than
ever, and openly planned to win the state election to be held on
September 4. If successful at the polls, the reins of organized
political power would pass into its hands and a secession convention
would be a direct possibility. And to intensify the danger was the
confirmed indifference or stubbornness of many citizens who seemed to
place petty personal differences before the interests of the state and
nation at large.

As is well known, Lincoln and the Federal Government accepted the defeat
at Bull Run calmly, and set about with grim determination to whip the
South at any cost. The President asked Congress for four hundred
thousand men and was voted five hundred thousand. In pursuance of such
policies, these urgent dispatches were hurried across the country:

War Department.
Washington, August 14, 1861.
Hon. John G. Downey,

Governor of California, Sacramento City, Cal.

Please organize, equip, and have mustered into service, at the earliest
date possible, four regiments of infantry and one regiment of cavalry,
to be placed at the disposal of General Sumner.

Simon Cameron,
Secretary of War.

By telegraph to Fort Kearney and thence by Pony Express and telegraph.

War Department, August 15, 1861.
Hon. John G. Downey,

Governor of California, Sacramento City, Cal.

In filling the requisition given you August 14th, for five regiments,
please make General J. H. Carleton of San Francisco, colonel of a
cavalry regiment, and give him proper authority to organize as promptly
as possible.

Simon Cameron,
Secretary of War.

Telegraph and Pony Express and telegraph.