"So McDowell must move," snapped Chase. "He, too, is inadequately equipped."

Discreetly, Stanley wrote a short message on a small tablet. Real problem is vols. He rose and passed the note across the desk. Cameron snatched it, read it, crushed it, and gave a slight nod in Stanley's direction. He understood McDowell's chief concern, which was not equipment but the need to rely on volunteer soldiers whose performance he couldn't predict and whose courage he couldn't trust. It was the same snide pose common to most regular officers from West Point — those, that is, who hadn't deserted after being given a fine education, free, at that school for traitors.

Cameron chose not to raise the point, however. He replied to the commanding general with an oozy deference. "General, I continue to believe the chief problem is not too few guns but too many men. We already have three hundred thousand under arms. Far more than we need for the present crisis."

"Well, I hope you're right about that," the President said from his corner. No one paid attention. As usual, Lincoln's voice tended to the high side, a source of many jokes behind his back.

What a congress of buffoons, Stanley thought as he wriggled his plump derriere on the hard chair bottom. Scott — whom the stupid Southrons called a free-state pimp but who actually needed to be closely watched; he was a Virginian, wasn't he? And he'd promoted scores of Virginians in the prewar army at the expense of equally qualified men from the North. Chase loved the niggers, and the President was a gauche farmer. For all Cameron's twisty qualities, he was at least a man of some sophistication in the craft of government.

Chase chose not to answer but to orate. "We must do more than hope, Mr. President. We need to purchase more aggressively in Europe. We have too few ordnance works in the North now that we have lost Harpers Fer —"