and the self-imposed restraint under which he exercised the really absolute powers within his grasp. For this all his countrymen revere his memory, rejoice in the excellence of his fame, and those who failed in the great struggle hold him in grateful esteem.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AS SEEN BY A LIFE

LONG DEMOCRAT.

AFTER GOING THROUGH BALTIMORE.

BY COL. B. F. WATSON,

OF THE MASSACHUSETTS SIXTH REGIMENT.

My slight individual knowledge of Abraham Lincoln was during his first term as President, and was comprised in two interviews at the White House, one at the request of the officers of my regiment and the other at Mr. Lincoln's request, and to a brief correspondence of which I still retain two of his autograph letters, all, interviews and correspondence, having some connection with each. other, although in dates separated by several months.

I first saw him on Sunday morning, April 21st, 1861, near the entrance to the Cabinet chamber in the White House. At the urgent request of the captains of the Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, I called upon Maj.-Gen. Winfield Scott, then commanding the United States Army. I was unattended. There is no special importance in the facts I am about to state unless it be remembered that this Sunday was but six days after the firing upon Sumter, and two days after the affair of Baltimore, that Washington and the whole country were surging under an excitement almost impossible to describe, and that I was the representative of a body of men who had been recently making history.

On the nineteenth of January, 1861, upon my motion, the commanders of its companies, Colonel Jones presiding, adopted a resolution tendering the services of the "Sixth " to the President. This first volunteering so impressed. the authorities that the Sixth was first called by the President on the sixteenth day of April, 1861; it rallied from thirty cities and towns, fully armed and equipped, and travelled over 600 miles with such alacrity that it reached Washington in advance of all other organized and armed forces in the afternoon of the nineteenth of April, after a conflict in the streets of Baltimore in which it had four men killed, thirty-six wounded by gunshots, and many otherwise injured, all of its unarmed men being driven back. It left many dead and wounded rebels behind it.

By unfortunate circumstances which divided the troops into three separate detachments, I, then only second in command, was compelled to fight my way through Baltimore at the head of about fifty men of Company K, of Boston. This detachment both drew and shed the first blood in the great Rebellion, although the main conflict of the day took place soon after with the detachment following, commanded for the time by Captain Follansbee. Baltimore, with its 200,000 inhabitants, its prevailing Southern sympathies, and its notorious "Plug Ugly" element, was the strategic key by which the dis-unionists proposed to lock the loyal North out of the nation's Capital until its occupation in force from Baltimore and the South should compel the recognition of the Confederacy as the de-facto Government. A single regiment, untrained in war, exhibiting the pluck to break through this cordon of rebellion, could be hailed only with relief by the beleaguered Government and by that fraction of

the residents of Washington who entertained positive sentiments of loyalty to the Union. Colonel Jones has testified that the President met the Sixth at the railroad station and said that if its arrival had been delayed a single day, Washington would have been in the hands of the rebels. It will appear later that the commanding general of the army entertained similar sentiments. Later on Congress recorded its tribute in a resolution tendering its thanks

"To the Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers for the alacrity with which they responded to the call of the President, and the patriotism and bravery which they displayed on the nineteenth of April last in fighting their way through the City of Baltimore on their march to the defence of the Federal Capital.”

The Sixth took possession of the Capital, and intrenched itself therein as though it had come to stay. It had not had a square meal since it left Philadelphia, the Thursday night before. Its experience had sharpened its appetite, for Baltimore had tendered no refreshments. Either by accident or by the design of some traitorous commissary, the presence of the "salt horse," as the boys familiarly called the meat which was offered them, could be detected by more of the senses than one, and was repulsive to all of them, and the large round crackers usually called "Hard-tack," the accompanying delicacy, were so adamantine from composition or antiquity as to withstand most assaults and, when conquered, to afford no sustenance. They were soon nicknamed "The regulars," from their supposed invincibility. Unless the veracity of veterans is to be questioned, certain retained specimens of these hard biscuit have since the Rebellion served as wheels to the play carts of two or three gener

ations of veteran babies. My mission on that Sunday morning was to induce General Scott to order a change in this diet. The situation mitigated the presumption of such an application to an officer of such exalted rank. I found General Scott attending a meeting of the President and his Cabinet, convened to listen to the demands of the authorities of Maryland, including the Mayor of Baltimore, that no troops should pass over the sacred soil of Maryland in reaching Washington, and I thus accidentally became a participant in a meeting which has become historic, and of which, so far as I know, I am now the only survivor. Being summoned to the open door of the room, General Scott received my salute and my story. He drew himself up to the most impressive development of his magnificent proportions, and grandly announced: "The Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts, sir, shall have anything it wants; we depend upon the Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts to save the Capital of the country, sir." All fear of the "guard tent" for my presumption disappeared.

The General's statement was true, certainly upon that Sunday, and for four or five days thereafter, and until Gen. B. F. Butler, with the Seventh Regiment of New York and the Eighth of Massachusetts, arrived in Washington, by the way of Annapolis.

It seems to be the fact that the President and the Commanding General placed little reliance upon the semimilitary and semi-political clubs, adorned with names of prominent politicians such as "Cassius M. Clay Invincibles," ""Hannibal Hamlin Guards," or upon the three or four unarmed and uncombined companies of Pennsylvania militia who, in post-bellum times, have published themselves as "First defenders of the Capital."