While these efforts were being made with the President and with the Cabinet, corresponding efforts were being made with General McClellan, then in command of the troops on the south side of the Potomac. Within a week or two from the opening of the court, one of the General's aids called upon General Montgomery to make inquiry about it, and several times after that this same aid (whom the Union men of Alexandria knew personally as a pro-slavery Washington sympathizer with the rebellion, though professedly a Union man) called upon General Montgomery to protest against the acts of the court, so far as they related to the people of Alexandria. Whether always sent by General McClellan, or whether he sometimes called on his own volition, was not definitely known. The Alexandria secession lawyer seemed to be on intimate personal relations with this aid-de-camp, and it may have been that this personal relationship stirred up the aid to special efforts. Doubtless the lawyer kept the aid, and, through the aid, General McClellan, well-informed of all that was going on in Alexandria--especially with regard to the doings of the provost court. Thus matters had gone on, and were going on, up to the time when the last case recorded in the previous chapter was decided by the court. The publicity given to that case, by the publication at length of the Judge's opinion in the New York Times and other Northern papers, aroused the entire pro-slavery secession-sympathizing element of the Northern States, and in a few days thereafter it came surging into Washington like a flood. It beat against the door of every Cabinet officer; it rolled and tumbled about in every hotel and drinking-saloon; it surged violently against the White House; and even found its way into the executive chamber. Mr. Bates now put on renewed and increased vigor, and insisted with the President, that, as all United States courts belonged to his department, and the people held him responsible, as Attorney-General, for their doings and misdoings, he, and he alone, ought to have the deciding of the Alexandria matter, and, if left with him, he would at once suppress the court.