285 "that hungry lot": Villard, Memoirs, 1:156.

285 "or even breathe": John G. Nicolay to O. M. Hatch, Mar. 7, 1861, Hatch MSS, ISHL.

285 "applications for office": Orville H. Browning to AL, Mar. 26, 1861, Lincoln MSS, LC.

285 "must see them": Henry Wilson to WHH, May 30, 1867, HWC.

286 "introductory" and "uninteresting": Bates, Diary, p. 177.

286 "to be understood": Welles, Diary, 1:6. Welles added this pa.s.sage to his diary later.

286 did he need?: CW, 4:279.

286 "question of time": Winfield Scott to AL, Mar. 12, 1861, Lincoln MSS, LC.

286 got the message: William Ernest Smith, The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics (New York: Macmillan Co., 1933), 2:910; Francis P. Blair, Sr., to Montgomery Blair, Mar. 12, 1861, Lincoln MSS, LC.

286 from the sea: My account of Fox's activities in the following pages draws heavily on Ari Hoogenboom's excellent "Gustavus Fox and the Relief of Fort Sumter," Civil War History 9 (Dec. 1963): 383398.

286 "to attempt it?": CW, 4:284.

287 "of the Government": The replies of all the cabinet members are in the Lincoln MSS, LC.

287 "national destruction consummated": CW, 4:424.

287 "a Military necessity": David C. Mearns, ed., The Lincoln Papers (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1948), 2:483484.

287 "be instantly withdrawn". James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (New York: Macmillan Co., 1906), 3:333.

287 "the movement ruined": San Francisco Daily Alta California, Apr. 1, 1861.

288 "worth a rush": Kenneth M. Stampp, And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis, 18601861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1950), p. 213.

288 "a richous cause": William Butler to Lyman Trumbull, Mar. 14, 1861, Trumbull MSS, LC.

288 "of the United States": Potter, Lincoln and His Party, p. 360.

288 "and refused admittance": Stephen A. Hurlbut to AL, Mar. 27, 1861, Lincoln MSS, LC.

288 "this Union perpetual": Nicolay and Hay, 3:394.

288 "in the dumps": Current, Lincoln and the First Shot, p. 79.

289 of General Scott: Nicolay and Hay, 3:430432.

289 by April 6: CW, 4:301. Hoogenboom, "Gustavus Fox and the Relief of Fort Sumter," p. 387, suggests that Lincoln had already approved Fox's expedition before the cabinet council of Mar. 29.

289 "no binding engagements": J. G. Randall, Lincoln the Liberal Statesman (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1947), p. 101.