The President once explained to a friend the theory of the Rebellion by the aid of the maps before him.
Running his long fore-finger down the map, he stopped at Virginia.
“We must drive them away from here” (Manassas Gap), he said, “and clear them out of this part of the State so that they cannot threaten us here (Washington) and get into Maryland.
“We must keep up a good and thorough blockade of their ports. We must march an army into East Tennessee and liberate the Union sentiment there. Finally we must rely on the people growing tired and saying to their leaders, ‘We have had enough of this thing, we will bear it no longer.’”
Such was President Lincoln’s plan for heading off the Rebellion in the summer of 1861. How it enlarged as the War progressed, from a call for seventy thousand volunteers to one for five hundred thousand men and $500,000,000 is a matter of well-known history.
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