neighborhood and entire State. Lee was immediately, thereupon,
directed by President Buchanan to proceed to the point of danger and
arrest the rioters. He did so promptly; found upon his arrival that
Brown and his confederates had shut themselves up in an engine-house
of the town, with a number of their prisoners. Brown was summoned to
surrender, to be delivered over to the authorities for civil trial--he
refused; and Lee then proceeded to assault, with a force of marines,
the stronghold to which Brown had retreated. The doors were driven in,
Brown firing upon the assailants and killing or wounding two; but he
and his men were cut down and captured; they were turned over to the
Virginia authorities, and Lee, having performed the duty assigned him
returned to Washington, and soon afterward to Texas.

He remained there, commanding the department, until the early spring
of 1861. He was then recalled to Washington at the moment when the
conflict between the North and the South was about to commence.

VI.

LEE AND SCOTT.

Lee found the country burning as with fever, and the air hot with
contending passions. The animosity, long smouldering between the two
sections, was about to burst into the flame of civil war; all men were
taking sides; the war of discussion on the floor of Congress was
about to yield to the clash of bayonets and the roar of cannon on the
battle-field.

Any enumeration of the causes which led to this unhappy state of
affairs would be worse than useless in a volume like the present. Even
less desirable would be a discussion of the respective blame to be
attached to each of the great opponents in inaugurating the bitter and
long-continued struggle. Such a discussion would lead to nothing, and
would probably leave every reader of the same opinion as before. It
would also be the repetition of a worn-out and wearisome story. These
events are known of all men; for the political history of the United
States, from 1820, when the slavery agitation began, on the question
of the Missouri restriction, to 1861, when it ended in civil
convulsion, has been discussed, rediscussed, and discussed again, in
every journal, great and small, in the whole country. The person who
is not familiar, therefore, with the main points at issue, must be
ignorant beyond the power of any writer to enlighten him. We need
only say that the election of Abraham Lincoln, the nominee of the
Republican party, had determined the Gulf