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1861] circumstances, a direct relief to the Government. But there was otherwise cause for the gravest alarm, which, in my visits to the White House, to the departments and public offices, I found shared by all loyalists, from the President and Cabinet officers down. The telegraph did not work, the mails did not arrive or depart. From the night of the twentieth on, there was practically no intercourse in any form between the national capital and any part of the country, and the Government remained without any intelligence from any quarter for several days. It knew only in a general way that the destruction of the railroad between Perryville and Washington had led to the adoption of the plan to transport the troops from the North by water to the capital. Literally, it was as though the government of a great nation had been suddenly removed to an island in mid-ocean in a state of entire isolation, and with all the inconveniences, uncertainties, and risks incidental thereto. This extraordinary situation naturally made me and all patriotic minds most anxious.

From what I saw myself and learned from others, I was oppressed by the thought that the Government was in a most perilous plight, that this must be known to the rebel authorities through the many willing and eager informants who left Washington daily for the South, and that, with the audacity they had so far shown, they would without fail take advantage of this, their great opportunity, and gain possession of the capital by a coup de main. The circumstances were so favorable to an attempt of this kind that I felt sure it would be made, and was prepared to hear at any moment of the appearance of a rebel force in the streets.

I did not understand then, nor could I ever understand, why the rebel hands were not stretched out to seize so easy a prey — a seizure that might have resulted in the immediate triumph of the insurrection. For, notwithstanding the hundreds of resignations from the army, navy, and civil service of the Government and the large