The Vagaries of War 1

With what looked very much like the advent of war in those first few weeks of the Lincoln administration the government over which he presided was embroiled in a huge bureaucratic mess. The army didn't seem to know what it was doing, but then neither did the various government departments, or Congress. In short, the benign chaos that dominated the sleepy little two-man law firm of Lincoln & Herndon for the previous 17 years seemed to apply to the White House in particular and the entire federal apparatus in general. [It's a good thing the Rebel government across the way was also embroiled in similar problems of needed rapid growth and did not have the wherewithal, or foresight, to send a moderately sized force across the Potomac in those early, early days of the war to a virtually undefended Washington, DC and bag the lot!]