radical change of parties through which he was
elected not only literally filled the White House with applicants for
office, but practically compelled a wholesale substitution of new
appointees for the old, to represent the new thought and will of the
nation. The task of selecting these was greatly complicated by the sharp
competition between the heterogeneous elements of which the Republican
party was composed. This work was not half completed when the Sumter
bombardment initiated active rebellion, and precipitated the new
difficulty of sifting the loyal from the disloyal, and the yet more
pressing labor of scrutinizing the organization of the immense new
volunteer army called into service by the proclamation of May 3. Mr.
Lincoln used often to say at this period, when besieged by claims to
appointment, that he felt like a man letting rooms at one end of his
house, while the other end was on fire. In addition to this merely
routine work was the much more delicate and serious duty of deciding the
hundreds of novel questions affecting the constitutional principles and
theories of administration.

The great departments of government, especially those of war and navy,
could not immediately expedite either the supervision or clerical
details of this sudden expansion, and almost every case of resulting
confusion and delay was brought by impatient governors and State
officials to the President for complaint and correction. Volunteers were
coming rapidly enough to the various rendezvous in the different States,
but where were the rations to feed them, money to pay them, tents to
shelter them, uniforms to clothe them, rifles to arm them, officers to
drill and instruct them, or transportation to carry them? In this
carnival of patriotism, this hurly-burly of organization, the weaknesses
as well as the virtues of human nature quickly developed themselves, and
there was manifest not only the inevitable friction of personal rivalry,
but also the disturbing and baneful effects of occasional falsehood and
dishonesty, which could not always be immediately traced to the
responsible culprit. It happened in many instances that there were
alarming discrepancies between the full paper regiments and brigades
reported as ready to start from State capitals, and the actual number of
recruits that railroad trains brought to the Washington camps; and Mr.
Lincoln several times ironically compared the process to that of a man
trying to shovel a bu