Congress immediately voted to raise 500,000 men for the army, two hundred and fifty millions of dollars in money, and to issue fifty millions of treasury-notes. The Confederate gathering determined to set 400,000 men to help the existing 210,000 hold up the cotton veil, now becoming so heavy and thick with dust and clots, that even Mr. Seward began to doubt whether it could be lifted in thirty days. In August, Forts Hatteras and Clark were pulled by Commodore Stringham into Pamlico Sound. For many months the country in front of Washington was converted into a vast drill-ground, over which Drill-Sergeant McClellan exercised the weary feet of over one hundred thousand soldiers, and the wearier patience of many millions of citizens. During this time the echoes of Bull Run, as numerous and diversified as an Irishman’s, haunted the consciences and journals of America, and the hollow faith of Europe. If it was all quiet on the Potomac, it was very unquiet elsewhere. General McClellan was always a believer in the Italian proverb, “Chi va piano. Va sano: Chi va forte, Va alla morte,” and so he held his ground near Washington. In September, a series of severe skirmishes, lasting three days, between General Robert E. Lee, now fifty-three years old, and General Reynolds, at Cheat Mountain and Elk Water, Virginia, followed by another October 3d at Greenbrier, disagreeably shook up the Confederate commander. These first attempts to turn against his countrymen the science and skill which he had gained at their expense and in their service, were creditable to his conscience, if not to his head and skill. The sleeper turned over with a sense of smothering, as in his nightmare horror he saw the drawn sword of his favorite sons pointed at him. On the 29th of October a fleet under Commodore Du Pont, with General T. W. Sherman and twenty thousand men on board, sailed for Port Royal, and after three elliptical turnings in the harbor, threw out such pills as they passed that Forts Walker and Beauregard, suddenly swallowing them, fell into such a vertigo, that they lost their heads, and tumbled helpless upon the ground. To balance this fatal bill of mortality, however, the Confederate General Evans, defeated with great loss a detachment of two thousand one hundred men under General Stone, at Ball’s Bluff, when Oregon lost one of her best senators and citizens, Colonel E. D. Baker.