the numbers of men engaged on both sides by Ropes,
Rhodes, and especially T. L. Livermore in his _Numbers and Losses_, are
most trustworthy, though this is a subject still hotly controverted in
both North and South. Each of the great battles has its historian: H. V.
Boynton, _The Battle of Chickamauga_, and Morris Schaff, _The Battle of
the Wilderness_, being the best examples.

CHAPTER XV

ONE NATION OR TWO?

The distressing news of Bull Run brought home to the North the awful
realities of war. Men who had all along distrusted the Republican party
now denounced a war waged for the emancipation of the South's slaves.
Both the President and Congress formally announced that it was a
struggle for the maintenance of the Union and not a war on behalf of the
slaves. It was well that this position was taken, else the North might
have broken into impotent factions. The East hated the South and warred
upon their ancient rivals, the planters; the border States owned slaves,
disliked the Republican party, and feared the purposes of those in
power; while the West loved the Union, held the negro in contempt, and
was committed to the party in power on the smallest possible margin.

None but Lincoln seemed to possess the tact and the ability necessary to
hold together these dissolving elements of a country never yet
thoroughly united; and even he was long doubted and distrusted by many
good men. Strange as it may seem, Douglas had been, until his death,
June 3, 1861, his right arm. Douglas's last speeches and dying words
urged upon the millions of his followers the necessity of giving their
lives to the cause of the Union. So critical was the situation that when
nominations were made for elective office in the Middle States or the
West in 1861, the Administration party took pains to disavow its former
attitude and put forward candidates who had been regular Democrats, thus
following the same compromising policy which Davis inaugurated in the
South. Daniel S. Dickinson, a member of the old Polk and Pierce party of
ruthless expansion, was made leader of the Administration forces in New
York in 1861, and David Tod, a stanch Douglas man in 1860, was elected
Governor of Ohio the same year by Republican votes. John C. Fremont was
removed from the command of the Federal army in St. Louis because he
undertook to emancipate the slaves in his department. The people of the