It is a remarkable fact that when President Lincoln was inaugurated, five months after General Scott sent his “views” to President Buchanan, and it was feared that the inauguration might be interrupted by violence of some kind, he was able to assemble at Washington but six hundred and fifty-three men, of the rank and file of the army. This number was made up by bringing the sappers and miners from West Point. Yet, down to that period, no part of the army, excepting the five companies referred to by General Scott in his “views,” had been disposed of anywhere but where the presence of a military force was essential to the protection of the settlers on the frontiers and the emigrants on the plains. No one could have known this better than General Scott, for it was his official duty to know it, and it is plain that his “views” were written with a full knowledge of the situation of the whole army. But General Scott’s “views” produced, and ought to have produced, no impression upon the mind of the President. That part of them which suggested a military movement was entirely impracticable. The political part, which related to the aspects of secession, its possible admission in one case and its denial in another, was of no value whatever to anybody but those who believed in the doctrine. With the exception of such circulation of these “views” as General Scott permitted by giving copies of them to his friends, they remained unpublished until the 18th of January, 1861. On that day they were published, by General Scott’s permission, in the _National Intelligencer_ at Washington, the editors saying that they had obtained a copy of them for publication because allusion had been made to them both in the public prints and in public speeches. This document, therefore, in an authentic shape, was made public in the midst of the secession movement, after the States of South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi and Alabama had adopted their ordinances of secession, and while the people of Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas were deliberating upon their course.[64] The President at that time passed over this publication in silence, for reasons which he afterwards assigned in the public controversy between General Scott and himself in October and November, 1862. Footnote 64: At the time of this publication of General Scott’s “views,” of the States which seceded before the attack on Fort Sumter, four had adopted ordinances of secession, and three had not acted. The eighth State, Arkansas, did not act until after Sumter.