Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[299] Arkansas, was taken possession of by the militia of that State, under the direction of the disloyal Governor Rector, on the 5th of February. They came from Helena, and readily obtained the Governor's sanction to the movement. Far-off Fort Kearney, on Grand Island, in the Platte River,

Arsenal at little Rook.

was also seized on the 19th of February, and a Palmetto flag was raised over it. It was soon retaken by the Union men.

The little Navy of the United States, like the Army, had been placed far beyond the reach of the Government for immediate use. The total number of vessels of all classes belonging to the Navy was ninety, carrying or designed to carry two thousand four hundred and fifteen guns. Of this number, only forty-two were in commission. Twenty-eight ships, bearing in the aggregate eight hundred and seventy-four guns, were lying in ports, dismantled, and none of them could be made ready for sea in less than several weeks' time; some of them would require at least six months. The most of those in commission had been sent to distant seas; and the entire available force for the defense of the whole Atlantic coast of the Republic was the Brooklyn, of twenty-five guns, and the store-ship Relief, of two guns. The Brooklyn drew too much water to enter Charleston harbor, where war had been commenced, with safety; and the Relief had been ordered to the coast of Africa with stores for the squadron there. Many of the officers of the Navy were born in Slave-labor States, and a large number of them abandoned their flag at this critical moment. No less than sixty of them, including eleven at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, had resigned their commissions.

Such was the utterly powerless condition of the Navy to assist in the preservation of the life of the Republic, when Isaac Toucey, of Connecticut, for four years at the head of the Navy Department, handed the seals of his office to his successor, Gideon Welles, of the same State. The amazing fact stands upon official record, that Mr. Buchanan's Secretaries of War and of the Navy had so disposed the available military forces of the Republic that it could not command their services at the critical moment when the assassin was preparing to strike it a deadly blow.

The public offices were found to be swarming with disloyal men. It was difficult to decide as to who were or were not trustworthy. It was necessary for the President to have proper instruments to work with; and