Between the 28th August and the 3rd of December, Fort Hatteras, Port Royal in South Carolina, and Ship Island, near New Orleans, were occupied. Preparations were made to seize on New Orleans; and, by a series of masterly movements, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, which had been in a painful state of conflict, were secured to the Union. Virginia proper had seceded with a flourish of States Rights. Her Western portion recognised the doctrine so far as to claim its right to leave the mother-state and return to the Union. This was not done without vigorous fighting by Generals Rosencranz and Morris, to whom the credit of both organising and acting is principally due, although General M‘Clellan, by a clever and Napoleonic despatch, announcing victory, attracted to himself the chief glory. General M‘Clellan had previously, in Kentucky, favoured the recognition of that state as neutral territory, as the rebels wished him to do--an attempt which Lincoln declared “would be disunion completed, if once entertained.” On the 1st Nov., 1861, General Scott, who had hitherto commanded the armies of the Union, asked for and obtained his discharge, and was succeeded by General M‘Clellan. “If,” as Holland remarks, “he had done but little before to merit this confidence, if he did but little afterwards to justify it, he at least served at that time to give faith to the people.” For three months he organised and supervised his troops with the talent which was peculiar to him--that of preparing great work for greater minds to finish. His photograph was in every album, and on every side were heard predictions that he would be the Napoleon, the Cæsar, the Autocrat of all the Americas. The Western Continent would be, after all, the greatest country in the world, and the greatest man in it was to be “Little Mac.” He was not as yet known by his great botanical _nom de guerre_ of the Virginian Creeper. CHAPTER VIII. Relations with Europe--Foreign Views of the War--The Slaves--Proclamation of Emancipation--Arrest of Rebel Commissioners--Black Troops.