The summing up of Hardin is concise: "We are to hold this State until we have orders to open hostilities. Our numbers must not be reduced by volunteers going East. Our presence will keep the Yankee troops from going East. We want the gold of the mines here, to sustain our finances. We have as commanding General, Albert Sidney Johnston, the ideal soldier of America, who will command the Mississippi. Lee, Beauregard, and Joe Johnston will operate in the East. The fight will be along the border lines. We will capture Washington, and seize New York and Philadelphia. A grand Southern army will march from Richmond to Boston. Another from Nashville to Cincinnati and Chicago. Johnston will hold on here, until forced to resign. Many officers go with him. We shall know of this, and throw ourselves on the arsenals and forts here, capturing the stores and batteries. The militia and independent companies will come over to us at once. With Judge Downey, a Democratic governor, no levies will be called out against us. The navy is all away, or in our secret control. Once in possession of this State, we will fortify the Sierra Nevada passes. We are prepared. Congress has given us $600,000 a year to keep up the Southern overland mail route. It runs through slave-holding territory to Arizona. Every station and relay has been laid out to suit us. We will have trusty friends and supplies, clear through Arizona and over the Colorado. At the outbreak, we will seize the whole system. It is the shortest and safest line." Hardin, lauding the skilful plans of a complacent Cabinet officer, did not know that the Southern idea was to connect Memphis direct with Los Angeles. It was loyal John Butterfield of New York, who artfully bid for a DOUBLE service from Memphis and St. Louis, uniting at Fort Smith, Arkansas, and virtually defeated this sly move of slavery. Judge Hardin, pausing in pride, could not foresee that Daniel Butterfield, the gallant son of a loyal sire, would meet the chivalry of the South as the Marshal of the greatest field of modern times--awful Gettysburg! While Hardin plotted in the West, Daniel Butterfield in the East personally laid out every detail of this great service, so as to checkmate the Southern design, were the Mississippi given over to loyal control. The afterwork of Farragut and Porter paralyzed the Southern line of advance; and on the Peninsula, at Fredericksburg, at Resaca and Chancellorsville, Major-General Daniel Butterfield met in arms many of the men who listened to Hardin's gibes as to the outwitted Yankee mail contractors. Hardin, complacent, and with no vision of the awful fields to come, secure in his well-laid plans, resumes: