And what advice did the country give him?There was one roaring shout dinning into his ears all round the Northern horizon-"On to Richmond!"Following Virginia's secession,Richmond had become the Confederate capital.It was expected that a session of the Confederate Congress would open at Richmond in July."On to Richmond!Forward to Richmond!"screamed The Tribune."The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on the 20th of July.By that date the place must be held by the national army."The Times advised the resignation of the Cabinet;it warned the President that if he did not give prompt satisfaction he would be superseded.
Though Lincoln laughed at the threat of The Times to "depose"him,he took very seriously all the swiftly accumulating evidence that the North was becoming rashly impatient Newspaper correspondents at Washington talked to his secretaries "impertinently."[5]Members of Congress,either carried away by the excitement of the hour or with slavish regard to the hysteria of their constituents,thronged to Washington clamoring for action.On purely political grounds,if on no other,they demanded an immediate advance into Virginia.
Military men looked with irritation,if not with contempt,on all this intemperate popular fury.That grim Sherman,who had been offended by Lincoln's tone the month previous,put their feeling into words.Declining the offer of a position in the War Department,he wrote that he wished "the Administration all success in its almost impossible task of governing this distracted and anarchial people."[6]
In the President's councils,General Scott urged delay,and the gathering of the volunteers into camps of instruction,their deliberate transformation into a genuine army.So inadequate were the resources of the government;so loose and uncertain were the militia organizations which were attempting to combine into an army;such discrepancies appeared between the nominal and actual strength of commands,between the places where men were supposed to be and the places where they actually were;that Lincoln in his droll way compared the process of mobilization to shoveling a bushel of fleas across a barn floor.[7]From the military point of view it was no time to attempt an advance.Against the military argument,three political arguments loomed dark in the minds of the Cabinet;there was the clamor of the Northern majority;there were the threats of the politicians who were to assemble in Congress,July fourth;there was the term of service of the volunteers which had been limited by the proclamation to three months.
