In the meantime Mr. Lincoln, after his inauguration, had a somewhat similar problem to deal with at the North. There was a party there clamorous for instant war with a declared purpose of abolishing slavery. The advocates of that policy pressed it upon the new president as urgently as the extreme secessionists at the South pressed secession upon Virginia. Mr. Lincoln saw clearly, as these his advisers did not, that their policy was utterly impracticable. From the very beginning he insisted upon confining his administration’s efforts rigidly to the task of preserving the Union with the traditional rights of all the states unimpaired. He saw clearly that there were men by hundreds of thousands at the North, who would heart and soul support the administration’s efforts to preserve the Union, even by war if that should be necessary, but who would antagonize by every means in their power a war for the extirpation of slavery at cost of Federal usurpation of control over any state in its domestic affairs. Accordingly, Mr. Lincoln held to his purpose. He would make no attempt to interfere with slavery where it constitutionally existed, and he would make no direct effort to compel seceding states to return to the Union; but he would use whatever force he might find necessary to repossess the forts, arsenals, post-offices and custom houses which the seceding states had seized upon within their borders, and he would endeavor to enforce the Federal laws there. But in order to accomplish this, military forces were necessary, and the government at Washington did not possess them. There was only the regular army, and it consisted of a mere handful of men, scattered from Eastport, Maine, to San Diego, California, from St. Augustine, Florida to Puget’s Sound, and charged with the task--for which its numbers were utterly inadequate--of keeping the Indians in order and proper subjection. It is doubtful that Mr. Lincoln could have concentrated a single full regiment of regulars at any point, even at risk of withdrawing from the Indian country the men absolutely necessary to prevent massacre there. He therefore called for volunteers with whom to conduct such military operations as he deemed necessary. He apportioned the call among the several states that had not yet seceded. He called upon Virginia for her quota.