Failure--McClellan at Washington

While these preparations for a Virginia campaign were going on, another
campaign was also slowly shaping itself in Western Virginia; but before
either of them reached any decisive results the Thirty-seventh Congress,
chosen at the presidential election of 1860, met in special session on
the fourth of July, 1861, in pursuance of the President's proclamation
of April 15. There being no members present in either branch from the
seceded States, the number in each house was reduced nearly one third. A
great change in party feeling was also manifest. No more rampant
secession speeches were to be heard. Of the rare instances of men who
were yet to join the rebellion, ex-Vice-President Breckinridge was the
most conspicuous example; and their presence was offset by prominent
Southern Unionists like Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, and John J.
Crittenden of Kentucky. The heated antagonisms which had divided the
previous Congress into four clearly defined factions were so far
restrained or obliterated by the events of the past four months, as to
leave but a feeble opposition to the Republican majority now dominant in
both branches, which was itself rendered moderate and prudent by the new
conditions.

The message of President Lincoln was temperate in spirit, but positive
and strong in argument. Reciting the secession and rebellion of the
Confederate States, and their unprovoked assault on Fort Sumter, he
continued:

"Having said to them in the inaugural address, 'You can have no conflict
without being yourselves the aggressors,' he took pains not only to keep
this declaration good, but also to keep the case so free from the power
of ingenious sophistry that the world should not be able to
misunderstand it. By the affair at Fort Sumter, with its surrounding
circumstances, that point was reached. Then and thereby the assailants
of the government began the conflict of arms, without a gun in sight or
in expectancy to return their fire, save only the few in the fort sent
to that harbor years before for their own protection, and still ready to
give that protection in whatever was lawful.... This issue embraces more
than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of
man the question whether a constitutional republic or democracy--a
government of the people by the same people--can or cannot maintain its
territorial integrity against its own domestic foes."

With his singular felic