At last, July 4, 1861, the Congress met, and proceeded at once with commendable alacrity and patriotism, to the consideration and enactment of measures sufficient to meet the extraordinary exigency, whether as regards the raising and equipment of the vast bodies of Union volunteers needed to put down Rebellion, or in the raising of those enormous amounts of money which the Government was now, or might thereafter be, called upon to spend like water in preserving the Union. It was at this memorable Session, of little over one month, that the chief of the great "War Measures" as they were termed, were enacted. CHAPTER XIII. THE STORM OF BATTLE We have seen how Fort Sumter fell; how the patriotic North responded to President Lincoln's Call, for 75,000 three-months volunteers, with such enthusiasm that, had there been a sufficiency of arms and accoutrements, he might have had, within three months of that Call, an Army of 500,000 men in the field; how he had called for 42,000 three-years volunteers early in May, besides swelling what little there was of a regular Army by ten full regiments; and how a strict blockade of the entire Southern Coast-line had not only been declared, but was now enforced and respected. General Butler, promoted Major-General for his Military successes at Annapolis and Baltimore, was now in command of Fortress Monroe and vicinity, with some 12,000 volunteers under him, confronted, on the Peninsula, by a nearly equal number of Rebel troops, under Generals Huger and Magruder--General Banks, with less than 10,000 Union troops, occupying Baltimore, and its vicinage. General Patterson, with some 20,000 Union troops--mostly Pennsylvania militia--was at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, with about an equal number of the Enemy, under General Joseph E. Johnston, at Harper's Ferry, on the Potomac, watching him. Some 50,000 Union troops were in camp, in and about Washington, on the Virginia side, under the immediate command of Generals McDowell and Mansfield--Lieutenant General Scott, at Washington, being in Chief-command of the Union Armies--and, confronting these Union forces, in Virginia, near the National Capital, were some 30,000 Rebel troops under the command of General Beauregard, whose success in securing the evacuation of Fort Sumter by its little garrison of half-starved Union soldiers, had magnified him, in the eyes of the rebellious South, into the proportions of a Military genius of the first order. There had been no fighting, nor movements, worthy of special note, until June 7th, when General Patterson advanced from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, to Hagerstown, Maryland. General Johnston at once evacuated Harper's Ferry, and retreated upon Winchester, Virginia.