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THE AWKWARD SQUAD.

WAR PREPARATIONS IN THE NORTH.

BY JACOB D. COX, MAJOR-GENERAL, U. S. V., EX-GOVERNOR OF OHIO ,EX-SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

T HE wonderful outburst of national feeling in the North in the spring of1861 has always been a thrilling and almost supernatural thing to thosewho participated in it. The classic myth that the resistless terror which some-times unaccountably seized upon an army was the work of the god Pan mightseem to have its counterpart in the work of a national divinity rousing awhole people, not to terror, but to a sublime enthusiasm of self-devotion.To picture it as a whole is impossible. A new generation can only approxi-mate a knowledge of the'feelings of that time by studying in detail some sep-arate scenes of the drama that had a continent for its stage. The writer canonly tell what happened under his eye. The like was happening everywherefrom Maine to Kansas . What is told is simply a type of the rest. J

On Friday, the twelfth day of April, 1861, the Senate of Ohio was in session,trying to go on in the ordinary routine of business, but with a sense ofanxiety and strain which was caused by the troubled condition of national

jin those opening days of the war, the NationalGovernment seemed for the moment to "be subor-dinated to the governments of the States. A rev-olution in the seceding South had half destroyedthe national legislature, and the national executivewas left without a treasury, without an army, andwithout laws adequate to create these at once. Atno time since the thirteen colonies declared theirindependence have the State governors and theState legislators found so important a field of dutyas then. A little hesitation, a little lukewarmness,would have ended all. Then it was that the in-tense zeal and high spirit of Governor Andrew ofMassachusetts led all New England , and was readyto lead the nation, as the men of Concord and Lex-

ington had led in 1775. Then it was that Gov-ernor Morton of Indiana came to the front with amasculine energy and burly weight of characterand of will which was typical of the force whichthe Great West could throw into the struggle.

Ohio was so situated with regard to West Vir-ginia and Kentucky that the keystone of the Unionmight be said to be now T west of the mountains.Governor Dennison mediated, like the statesmanhe was, between East and West; and Tod andBrough, following him by the will of the peoplein votes that ran up to majorities of near a hun-dred thousand, gave that vigorous support to Mr.Lincoln which showed the earnest nationality ofthe “ war Democrats ” of that day. — J. D. C.