As a public man, Governor Andrew was distinguished for quickness, perspicasity, and energy. The electric, social element of his being made him an apt reader of human nature, and gave him that prophetic insight into what would arise from the doings of men, which enabled him to see afar off and provide for possible emergencies. Thus at the time he was appointed Governor, nothing was farther from the thoughts of the body of Northern men than that there could ever be really and in fact a war in America. All the war talk and war threats that had come from the South had been pleasantly laughed at, as mere political catch words and nursery tales meant to frighten children. But Andrew felt the atmosphere chilling with the coming storm, and from the moment of his election, he began making active preparations for war, which were at the time as much laughed at as Noah's for the flood. But the time came which the laughers and skeptics said would not come, and behold on the 15th of April, the President's requisition for troops! Thanks to the previous steps taken by Governor Andrew, the Massachusetts sixth regiment started from Boston in the afternoon of the 17th, leaving the 4th all but ready to follow. _Only one day_ was necessary to get a thousand men started--and this company was the first that entered Washington _in uniform_ and with all the moral effect of uniformed soldiers. This leads us to the celebrated story of the blue overcoats, which is this: Shortly after Lincoln's election, Benjamin F. Butler took tea with Jefferson Davis in Washington, and there satisfied himself in personal conversation that a war must be the result of the machinations that were going on. He posted to Boston and communicated what he knew to Governor Andrew, who immediately called a secret session of the legislature in which he told the crisis and asked for an appropriation to get troops in readiness. They voted twenty-five thousand dollars which Governor Andrew put into arms, ammunition and stores for an immediate equipment for the field. Among other things, he had two or three thousand army overcoats made and stored in the State house. When the call came, the sixth regiment had not half a quota, but was immediately made up by the fiery zeal of enlisting citizens, who contended for places and even paid large bounties to buy the chance to go. They came into Boston an army of zealous new recruits. The Governor uniformed them at one stroke with his overcoats, and had each man's outfit ready for him so that in one day they were marching from Boston to the capital; and in six days, on Sunday, he was able to announce to the government that the whole quota of men required of Massachusetts were already either in Washington or in Fortress Monroe, on their way thither.