The political problems alone would have been as great a load as mortal man might have been expected to carry, but his perplexities were increased, his time occupied, and his patience sorely tested by such an undignified and unpatriotic clamor for offices as has never been exceeded in the history of our government. The Democratic party had been in power for many years. Every position in the gift of President Buchanan had been filled with a Democrat, many of them Southern sympathizers, and now hordes of hungry Republicans besieged the White House demanding appointments. The situation was described by the President in a single ejaculation. A Senator who noticed an expression of anxiety and dejection upon his face, inquired,-- "Has anything gone wrong, Mr. President? Have you heard bad news from Fort Sumter?" "No," answered the President, solemnly. "It's the post-office at Jonesville, Missouri." The area of the country was vast; the seat of war stretched from the Atlantic to the Missouri River, with a strip of States undecided in their purpose which must be carefully handled to prevent them from joining the Confederacy. With inexperienced and incompetent commanders, a divided Cabinet, public clamor dinning in his ears, and his mind harassed by other cares and perplexities, it was difficult to develop a military policy and plan a campaign for the suppression of the rebellion. Even if the situation had been divested of political significance, it would have taxed the genius of a Napoleon. The coast line to be protected was more than three thousand six hundred miles long, the frontier line was nearly eight thousand miles, and the field of operation covered an area larger than the whole of Europe. Furthermore, it was a political war, and everything must be planned with a view to political consequences. It was not a struggle between rival powers, nor for conquest, but for the preservation of the Union, and from the beginning President Lincoln appreciated that the common interests and the general welfare required that the integrity of the country be preserved with as little loss and as little punishment as possible to either side. Whatever damage was done must be repaired at the end by a reunited country; whatever was destroyed was a common loss. The war was a family affair, in which the sufferings and sorrows and material losses must be equally shared. With all these considerations in his mind, he undertook to guide the government in such a way as to prevent the dissolution of the Union and at the same time accomplish the overthrow of the slave power and the removal of that curse from the American people.