The regular United States army at that time was ridiculously inadequate in numbers to undertake any enterprise of consequence. Its feeble forces were scattered from Maine to Texas, from Florida to Oregon. Its hands were more than full with the task of holding the Indians in subjection and protecting the borders against the ravages of savage war. The Buchanan administration called no volunteers into the field, while in every Southern state there were musterings at every county seat and military organizations of a formidable character.
In the meantime the newly elected president and those who supported him had no opportunity to make preparation for meeting these conditions. They were not even privileged to advise.
The administration that still remained in power was rapidly disintegrating. Four of the cabinet officers resigned their places, thus still further paralyzing the hands of the President. At the North there was a fixed conviction that secession was merely a bit of political play which would never be pushed to the point of actual war and consequently there was very little of military preparation, while all the able-bodied young men of the South, and even of Virginia, which so emphatically refused to secede, were organizing and drilling and holding themselves in readiness for whatever might happen.
But everywhere there was apprehension. From the hour of the election returns in November until the incoming of Mr. Lincoln's administration on the fourth of March, conservative men at the North and at the South anxiously busied themselves in an endeavor to find a way out of the difficulty, to save the Union from disruption and the country from civil war.
On the second day of December the Albany _Evening Journal_, a newspaper edited by Thurlow Weed and the personal organ of Mr. Seward, appealed strongly and even passionately to patriotism throughout the country for "such moderation, and forbearance as will draw out, combine and strengthen the Union sentiment of the whole country."
But this and like appeals made by Union-loving, patriotic men North and South fell, not so much upon deaf ears as upon the ears of those who had lost control of their respective parties. Had the conservative men of the Nation been able to act together, they must undoubtedly have prevailed for peace in virtue of their majority of a million, but on both sides the radicals had seized upon the reins. At the South the secessionists were rejoicing in Mr. Lincoln's election under circumstances that gave excuse for the dissolution of the Union. At the North the radical abolitionists saw and welcomed in that event an opportunity to use the whole power of the Federal Government for the final extirpation of African slavery. At the North and at the South the extremists were in control, chiefly by virtue of their intensity and their clamor.