THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 9 on the eve of the crisis which was to follow Mr. Lincoln’s election, Mr. Floyd, now a General among the secessionists and then war Secretary under Mr. Buchanan, had taken pains to send to the South the contents of all the Federal arsenals, and to despatch the whole of the regular army to Texas, putting between the army and Washington the barrier of the slave States, in order to paralyze the sentiment of duty which might lead the soldiers to follow that small number among their officers who should remain loyal to their flag. Nothing accordingly was lacking in the precautions taken by the Confederacy. They had dealt with the navy as with the army. It was dispersed at the four corners of the globe. As to the North, it did just nothing. Yet it had not 'wanted warnings. For many years Secession had been openly preached. A curious book called the “ Partisan Leader,” published twenty years ago, is a proof of this. Under the form of a novel this book is a really prophetic picture of the war which is at this moment desolating Virginia, a picture so highly colored as easily to explain tire ardor with which the imagination of the Creole ladies has espoused the cause of the South. But it was believed in the North, as in various other places, that “all would come right.” The North felt itself the stronger, and saw no reason for troubling itself prematurely. It was the old story of the hare and the tortoise. Moreover, in the last resort, the North counted on the several hundred thousand volunteers set down in the almanacks as representing the military force of the country, and supposed by the popular mind to be irresistible. The North was quickly undeceived. The people of the South were beaten in the presidential election. They ■were still masters of the Senate, and it was not the loss of power which roused them, it was the wound inflicted on their pride. This was used by the ambitions managers of the party of Secession to excite the South-
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