“April 18, 1861, Senator Douglas, called on the President, and had an interesting conversation, on the present condition of the country. The substance of it was, on the part of Mr. Douglas, that while he was unalterably opposed to the administration in all its political issues, he was prepared to fully sustain the President, in the exercise of all his Constitutional functions, to preserve the Union, maintain the Government, and defend the Federal Capitol. A firm policy and prompt action was necessary. The Capitol was in danger, and must be defended at all hazards, and at any expense of men and money. He spoke of the present and future, without any reference to the past.” Douglas followed this with a great speech at Chicago, in which he uttered a sentence that was soon quoted on nearly every Northern tongue. It was simply this, “that there now could be but two parties, patriots and traitors.” It needed nothing more to rally the Douglas Democrats by the side of the Administration, and in the general feeling of patriotism awakened not only this class of Democrats, but many Northern supporters of Breckinridge also enlisted in the Union armies. The leaders who stood aloof and gave their sympathies to the South, were stigmatized as “Copperheads,” and these where they were so impudent as to give expression to their hostility, were as odious to the mass of Northerners as the Unionists of Tennessee and North Carolina were to the Secessionists—with this difference—that the latter were compelled to seek refuge in their mountains, while the Northern leader who sought to give “aid and comfort to the enemy” was either placed under arrest by the government or proscribed politically by his neighbors. Civil war is ever thus. Let us now pass to THE POLITICAL LEGISLATION INCIDENT TO THE WAR. The first session of the 37th Congress began July 4, 1861, and closed Aug. 6. The second began December 2, 1861, and closed July 17, 1862. The third began December 1, 1862 and closed March 4, 1863. All of these sessions of Congress were really embarrassed by the number of volunteers offering from the North, and sufficiently rapid provision could not be made for them. And as illustrative of how political lines had been broken, it need only be remarked that Benjamin F. Butler, the leader of the Northern wing of Breckinridge’s supporters, was commissioned as the first commander of the forces which Massachusetts sent to the field. New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio—the great West—all the States, more than met all early requirements. So rapid were enlistments that no song was as popular as that beginning with the lines: “We are coming, Father Abraham, Six hundred thousand strong.”