shel of fleas across a barn floor.

While the month of May insensibly slipped away amid these preparatory
vexations, camps of instruction rapidly grew to small armies at a few
principal points, even under such incidental delay and loss; and during
June the confronting Union and Confederate forces began to produce the
conflicts and casualties of earnest war. As yet they were both few and
unimportant: the assassination of Ellsworth when Alexandria was
occupied; a slight cavalry skirmish at Fairfax Court House; the rout of
a Confederate regiment at Philippi, West Virginia; the blundering
leadership through which two Union detachments fired upon each other in
the dark at Big Bethel, Virginia; the ambush of a Union railroad train
at Vienna Station; and Lyon's skirmish, which scattered the first
collection of rebels at Boonville, Missouri. Comparatively speaking all
these were trivial in numbers of dead and wounded--the first few drops
of blood before the heavy sanguinary showers the future was destined to
bring. But the effect upon the public was irritating and painful to a
degree entirely out of proportion to their real extent and gravity.

The relative loss and gain in these affairs was not greatly unequal. The
victories of Philippi and Boonville easily offset the disasters of Big
Bethel and Vienna. But the public mind was not yet schooled to patience
and to the fluctuating chances of war. The newspapers demanded prompt
progress and ample victory as imperatively as they were wont to demand
party triumph in politics or achievement in commercial enterprise.
"Forward to Richmond," repeated the "New York Tribune," day after day,
and many sheets of lesser note and influence echoed the cry. There
seemed, indeed, a certain reason for this clamor, because the period of
enlistment of the three months' regiments was already two thirds gone,
and they were not yet all armed and equipped for field service.

President Lincoln was fully alive to the need of meeting this popular
demand. The special session of Congress was soon to begin, and to it the
new administration must look, not only to ratify what had been done, but
to authorize a large increase of the military force, and heavy loans for
coming expenses of the war. On June 29, therefore, he called his cabinet
and principal military officers to a council of war at the Executive
Mansion, to discuss a more formidable campaign than had yet been
planned. General Scott was opposed to suc