To the recommendation that $400,000,000 be appropriated, and 400,000 men raised, for the prosecution of the war, Congress responded with great unanimity, granting instead $500,000,000 in money, and calling for 500,000 volunteers for the army. This action was consummated on the 22d of July—the day following the battle of Bull Run. The Senate had passed a bill of similar character on the 10th-five Senators, Messrs. Johnson, of Missouri, Kennedy, Polk, Powell and Saulsbury, voting in favor of an amendment reducing the number of men to 200,000. Otherwise, the measure was unopposed in that body.

On the 22d of July, the House of Representatives passed, with only two dissenting votes, the following resolution, introduced by Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky:

Resolved, By the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States, That the present deplorable civil war has been forced upon the country by the Disunionists of the Southern States now in revolt against the Constitutional Government, and in arms around the capital; that in this National emergency Congress, banishing all feeling of mere passion or resentment, will recollect only its duty to the whole country; that this war is not waged on our part in any spirit of oppres sion, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of the States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the Union, with all the dignities, equality and rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.

On the 10th of July, a bill passed the House of Representatives, authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to effect a National loan, of not exceeding $250,000,000, on bonds bearing seven per cent. interest, redeemable in twenty years, or in Treasury-notes of a denomination not less than $50, payable in three years, at an interest of seven and three-tenths per cent. Only five Representatives voted in the negative namely: Messrs. Burnett, Reid, Norton, Vallandigham and Wood. The first three of these, from Kentucky and Missouri, were soon after direct participants in the rebellion, either as civil or mili

tary officials. The subsequent course of the other two, living at the North, has been steadily in keeping with this association of their names and acts.

With certain modifications, which need not be particularized, the financial policy thus indicated was ultimately adopted by both houses of Congress, and approved by the President. A new tariff bill, designed to increase the revenue from imports, and a direct tax bill to raise $20,000,000, also became a law on the 2d of August. A confiscation act, moderate in its provisions, was also passed near the close of the session. An act legalizing the official measures of the President, during the recent emergency, received the support of nearly every member of both houses. The extra session closed on the 6th day of August.

On the 20th day of July, the so-called Congress of the Rebel Confederacy assembled at Richmond, the seat of the civil branch of the rebellion having been removed to that city from Montgomery, where the same body had closed its first session on the 21st of May. Eight days after the latter date Davis arrived in Richmond, and his "government" was there put in operation. His message was sent in on the 20th of July. He therein congratulates his friends on the accession of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas to the seceding sisterhood, making in all eleven States against twenty-three still loyal. The subjoined extracts will serve to show the general character of the document, giving also an authentic Southern view of the contest down to the day preceding the battle of Manassas :

I deemed it advisable to direct the removal of the several Executive departments, with their archives, to this city, to which you have removed the seat of government. Immediately after your adjournment, the aggressive movements of the enemy required prompt, energetic action. The accumulation of his forces on the Potomac sufficiently demonstrated that his efforts were to be directed against Virginia, and from no point could necessary measures for her defense and protection be so effectively decided as from her own capital. The rapid progress of events for the last few weeks has fully sufficed to lift the vail, behind which the true policy and purposes of the

Government of the United States had been previously concealed. Their odious features now stand fully revealed. The message of their President, and the action of their Congress during the present month, confess their intention of the subjugation of these States, by a war by which it is impossible to attain the proposed result, while its dire calamities, not to be avoided by us, will fall with double severity on themselves.

Referring to the hearty response of Congress to the recom mendation of President Lincoln as to men and means for prosecuting the war begun at Fort Sumter-the responsibility of which he vainly endeavors, by angry special pleading, to fix upon the Government-Davis, with a recklessness commensurate with his passion, goes on to say:

These enormous preparations in men and money, for the conduct of the war, on a scale more grand than any which the new world ever witnessed, is a distinct avowal, in the eyes of civilized man, that the United States are engaged in a conflict with a great and powerful nation. They are at last compelled to abandon the pretense of being engaged in dispersing rioters and suppressing insurrections, and are driven to the acknowledgment that the ancient Union has been dissolved. They recognize the separate existence of these Confederate States, by an interdictive embargo and blockade of all commerce between them and the United States, not only by sea, but by land; not only in ships, but in cars; not only with those who bear arms, but with the entire population of the Confederate States. Finally, they have repudiated the foolish conceit that the inhabitants of this Confederacy are still citizens of the United States; for they are waging an indiscriminate war upon them all with savage ferocity, unknown in modern civilization.

After a highly-wrought picture of imaginary outrages perpetrated in Virginia by Federal armies that had scarcely begun to move, except in Western Virginia, where no pretext for such complaints existed, and by the Government in its adoption of the policy of non-intercourse, he comes to the case of certain captured privateersmen who were in close confinement, awaiting their trial for piracy. No terms for an exchange of prisoners had yet been agreed upon the number on either side being very small, and the civil bearings of the question being yet under consideration. On this subject Davis fiercely remarks.

The prisoners of war taken by the enemy on board the armed schooner Savannah, sailing under our commission, were, as I was credibly advised, treated like common felons, put in irons, confined in a jail usually appropriated to criminals of the worst dye, and threatened with punishment as such. I had made application for the exchange of these prisoners to the commanding officer of the enemy's squadron off Charleston, but that officer had already sent the prisoners to New York when application was made. I therefore deemed it my duty to renew the proposal for the exchange to the constitutional Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, the only officer having control of the prisoners. To this end, I dispatched an officer to him under a flag of truce, and, in making the proposal, I informed President Lincoln of my resolute purpose to check all barbarities on prisoners of war by such severity of retaliation on prisoners held by us as should secure the abandonment of the practice. This communication was received and read by an officer in command of the United States forces, and a message was brought from him by the bearer of my communication, that a reply would be returned by President Lincoln as soon as possible. I earnestly hope this promised reply (which has not yet been received) will convey the assurance that prisoners of war will be treated, in this unhappy contest, with that regard for humanity, which has made such conspicuous progress in the conduct of modern warfare. As measures of precaution, however, and until this promised reply is received, I still retain in close custody some officers captured from the enemy, whom it had been my pleasure previously to set at large on parole, and whose fate must necessarily depend on that of prisoners held by the enemy.

The bearer of the communication referred to in this extract had come, under a flag of truce, to the headquarters of Gen. McDowell, at the Arlington House, on the 8th of July, causing much speculation, for a brief time, as to the object of his mission. Its real purport, however, was soon known. Capt. Taylor, who bore the insolent letter of Davis, reported to the latter, on the 10th of July, that the missive had been delivered, and added:

After reading your communication to Mr. Lincoln, Gen. Scott informed me that a reply would be returned by Mr. Lincoln as soon as possible.

It would be more than doubtful, on such equivocal evidence alone, whether any reply was ever "promised," or even remotely suggested by the President. Certain it is that he made neither promise nor reply. At a subsequent date it was decided to put captured privateersmen on the same footing as other prisoners of war.

After persuasive allusions to the Border Slave States, with a palliation of the Kentucky neutrality so unsparingly dealt with by President Lincoln in his message, the Rebel "Executive" proceeds to other topics:

The operations in the field will be greatly extended by reason of the policy which heretofore has been secretly entertained, and is now avowed and acted on by us. The forces hitherto raised provide amply for the defense of seven States which originally organized in the Confederacy, as is evidently the fact, since, with the exception of three fortified islands, whose defense is efficiently aided by a preponderating naval force, the enemy has been driven completely out of these stations; and now, at the expiration of five months from the formation of the Government, not a single hostile foot presses their soil. These forces, however, must necessarily prove inadequate to repel invasion by the half million of men now proposed by the enemy, and a corresponding increase of our forces will become

necessary.

To speak of subjugating such a people, so united and determined, is to speak in a language incomprehensible to them; to resist attack on their rights or their liberties is with them an instinct. Whether this war shall last one, or three, or five years, is a problem they leave to be solved by the enemy alone. It will last till the enemy shall have withdrawn from their borders; till their political rights, their altars, and their homes are freed from invasion, Then, and then only, will they rest from this struggle to enjoy, in peace, the blessings which, with the favor of Providence, they have secured by the aid of their own strong hearts and steady arms.

It may be added that the chief conspirator found his subordinates of the self-styled Confederate Congress ready to second his wishes, and to act in the spirit of his communication to them. They voted, without stint-in their assumption of authoritymen and means for carrying on aggressive as well as defensive war, on the scale planned by their chief.