Thus far, the patriotic record was a glorious one. Almost one hundred thousand three months' militia had shouldered muskets to redress the fall of Fort Sumter; over half a million three years' volunteers promptly enlisted to form the first national army under the laws of Congress passed in August, 1861; nearly half a million more volunteers came forward under the tender of the governors of free States and the President's call of July, 1862, to repair the failure of McClellan's Peninsula campaign. Several minor calls for shorter terms of enlistment, aggregating more than forty thousand, are here omitted for brevity's sake. Had the Western victories continued, had the Mississippi been opened, had the Army of the Potomac been more fortunate, volunteering would doubtless have continued at quite or nearly the same rate. But with success delayed, with campaigns thwarted, with public sentiment despondent, armies ceased to fill. An emergency call for three hundred thousand nine months' men, issued on August 4, 1862, produced a total of only eighty-six thousand eight hundred and sixty; and an attempt to supply these in some of the States by a draft under State laws demonstrated that mere local statutes and machinery for that form of military recruitment were defective and totally inadequate. With the beginning of the third year of the war, more energetic measures to fill the armies were seen to be necessary; and after very hot and acrimonious debate for about a month, Congress, on March 3, 1863, passed a national conscription law, under which all male citizens between the ages of twenty and forty-five were enrolled to constitute the national forces, and the President was authorized to call them into service by draft as occasion might require. The law authorized the appointment of a provost-marshal-general, and under him a provost-marshal, a commissioner, and a surgeon, to constitute a board of enrollment in each congressional district; who, with necessary deputies, were required to carry out the law by national authority, under the supervision of the provost-marshal-general. For more than a year past, the Democratic leaders in the Northern States had assumed an attitude of violent partizanship against the administration, their hostility taking mainly the form of stubborn opposition to the antislavery enactments of Congress and the emancipation measures of the President. They charged with loud denunciation that he was converting the maintenance of the Union into a war for abolition, and with this and other clamors had gained considerable successes in the autumn congressional elections of 1862, though not enough to break the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. General McClellan was a Democrat, and, since his removal from command, they proclaimed him a martyr to this policy, and were grooming him to be their coming presidential candidate.