It was an imposing sight when the President’s tall figure appeared standing in the midst of his councilors, with the halyards in his hands, ready to send the stars and stripes aloft. With his hand uplifted and his face raised toward the sky, he ran the flag up, and saw it catch the wind and float slowly out between him and the blue sky. He stood looking at it a moment, then turned his bright, earnest eyes upon the uplifted faces of the crowd. “My friends,” he said, in a clear, full voice, “it is an easy thing for me to run this flag up to the top of the staff, but it will take the whole nation to keep it there.” A shout rang up from the multitude, one of those wild, impulsive echoes of a thousand hearts, which bespeak the enthusiasm of untried strength. It seemed an easy thing to the people, with the tramp of those twenty thousand new troops in their ears, to keep thousands of star-spangled banners skyward; but before many days had passed, the rush of fugitive feet, as they fled along those very pavements, proved how prophetic that simple speech of President Lincoln’s was. But even then the armies on the opposite banks of the Potomac were mustering in force, for it had been decided that an advance should be made and a battle fought, which it was hoped would decide a war which no one expected to be of long duration. Many of these new troops passed from that Washington review, and were swallowed up by the grand army without having been inspected by the commanding General, who afterward considered this fact one cause of his defeat. But the nation was eager for action; a portion of the press fiercely urgent for a forward movement; the two houses of Congress impatient of delay; so, all unprepared, General Scott ordered the advance, against his own judgment, to appease the general clamor. ADVANCE OF THE GRAND ARMY. From the time of the President’s proclamation calling for troops until the 12th of July, immediately preceding the advance of the Grand Army under General McDowell, to attack the rebel forces at Bull Run, the time had been industriously employed in preparation. Fortifications had been erected on the north side of the Potomac, at eight or ten points within a radius of three miles from Washington and Georgetown. No military force of the rebels was then known to exist on the Maryland shore; but from Mount Vernon to the mouth of the Chesapeake on the south, and from the Chain Bridge to the junction of the Shenandoah at Harper’s Ferry on the north, they held undisputed possession.