To the exultant shout that went up from the armed slave States, there came an answering cry of rage and indignation from the free States. The whole country trembled with the war spirit. War! war! war! Every city, town and village in the North answered Lincoln’s call for troops to crush the rebellion. Farms and factories poured out their men. Streets were gay with bunting and noisy with marching feet. Industry was abandoned in the instant and tremendous preparation for the conflict. Yet Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand men was to grow into a call for a half million men and a half billion dollars, and the struggle between the sixteen free States and the seven rebellious slave States, with the border States hesitating between, was to change into a four years’ death-grapple between all the States of the South and all the States of the North, a conflict without parallel in its horror and costliness. Mr. Stoddard, one of Lincoln’s private secretaries, thus described Lincoln in the White House at the beginning of the war: “A remarkably tall and forward-bending form is coming through the further folding doors, leaving them carelessly open behind him. He is walking slowly, heavily, like a man in a dream. His strongly marked features have a drawn look, there are dark circles under his deep-set eyes, and these seem to be gazing at something far away, or into the future.” That countenance of unutterable sadness, fixed gray eyes that seemed to see something in the vacant air; thin, stooped shoulders, bowed head, hands clasped behind the back, slow, halting step and general air of weariness and melancholy abstraction, was known only to those who saw Lincoln when he wrestled alone with the agony of his burdens. The greedy crowd that pressed for office, the impatient fanatics who thrust their advice upon him, the haughty statesmen who condescended to meddle with his powers, the tricksters and traders, saw only the simple, resolute, vulgar, kindly Lincoln, full of the old allure of anecdote and jest, patient, keen and ready in a flash to avoid an immature decision or soften a refusal by a witty epigram or an illuminating joke. It is an astonishing evidence of Lincoln’s complex character that he could laugh and play like a careless boy, and patiently putter over the small details of office-giving, while the iron of his character was annealing in the furnace of war. No more sensitive or imaginative man than Lincoln ever lived. His amazing sense of humor stayed him in his trial. It was sometimes Titanic. “Has anything gone wrong at the front?” asked a friend, seeing him downcast. “No,” replied the President with a weary smile. “It isn’t the war; it’s the post office at Brownsville, Missouri.” The deadly, ceaseless, shameless crowding and intriguing of place-hunters--notwithstanding the shock of war that threatened the nation itself--made a profound impression on Lincoln.