Chap. IV. many hours. Major Anderson capitulated on honourable terms, and was conveyed with his handful of soldiers to New York in the same vessel which had brought their intended supplies. The ships composing the expedition had appeared off the bar before the attack began, a gale blowing at the time; but they remained spectators of the combat, and did not venture, as indeed they could not usefully have done, within the range of the Confederate batteries.

With these events vanished instantly all hopes of a peaceable separation or a peaceable reunion, and no future historian will hesitate to date from them the commencement of the civil war. The sword was drawn, and all over the country it was thoroughly understood that the question whether the revolted States were to be regained by the Republic or lost to her for ever must now be decided by force.

On the day following that on which Fort Sumter had been evacuated, the following Proclamation, under the President's signature, was issued by the Government at Washington :

"PROCLAMATION.

"Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some time past and now are opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by law :

"Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution and the laws, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, the militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of 75,000, in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed.

"The details for this object will be immediately communicated to the State authorities through the War Department.

"I appeal to all loyal citizens to favour, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honour, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular Government, and to redress wrongs already long enough endured.

"I deem it proper to say that the first service assigned to the forces called forth will probably be to re-possess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union; and in every event the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of or interference with property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country.

"And I hereby command the persons composing the combinations aforesaid to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes within twenty days from this date.

"Deeming that the present condition of public affairs presents an extraordinary occasion, I do hereby, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution, convene both Houses of Congress.

"Senators and Representatives are therefore summoned to assemble at their respective Chambers, at 12 o'clock, noon, on Thursday, the 4th day of July next, then and there to consider and determine such measures as, in their wisdom, the public safety and interest may seem to demand.

"In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

"Done at the City of Washington, this 15th day of April, in the year of our Lord 1861, and of the Independence of the United States the 85th.

An accompanying circular, signed by the Secretary of War, informed the Governors of the several States that the men would be required to serve for three months unless sooner discharged.

Throughout the Free States of the Union this call was answered with the greatest alacrity. Three Massachusetts regiments were on their road in little more than forty-eight hours after it reached Boston; a regiment from Indiana, and one from New York, marched on the 18th, and troops were soon pouring into Washington from every part of the North and West. On the Middle or Border Slave States the summons to action produced a very different effect, and the revolt, which speedily followed, of four of these States to the Southern Confederacy, forms another important era in the history of the

war.

Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland had hitherto refrained from casting in their lot with the South. Their sym

Chap. IV.

Chap. IV. pathies, as Slave States, were more or less strongly Southern; but they were extremely unwilling to desert the Union. In all, except South Carolina, there was a division of interests; party spirit in most of them ran high, and in some-especially Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee-there was an element of violence and lawlessness which had a tendency to make dissensions fierce and dangerous. In the contests for the Presidency, these States, as we have seen, had given the bulk of their votes to the neutral candidate, and during January and February they had made anxious efforts to promote a compromise. In all, except Kentucky and Maryland, Conventions had been summoned, but in none of them had the secessionists been able to secure the passing of an Ordinance. In North Carolina and Tennessee the holding of a Convention had been negatived by the popular vote. Such, throughout this large zone of the Union, was the situation of affairs, until the attempt to provision Fort Sumter forced upon the people the hard necessity of taking arms, either against the Union to which they earnestly wished to adhere, or against that portion of their countrymen with whom they had been long accustomed to feel and act in common. Thus pressed, Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee chose the former alternative. Kentucky struggled hard for some time to preserve a neutrality which had become impossible, and finally threw in her lot with the Union. The little State of Delaware, a mere slip of sea-coast with scarcely 1,800 slaves, made the same choice, but without hesitation. She had no militia, but answered the President's call by sending volunteers. Maryland, secessionist at heart and at first turbulent and unmanageable, was soon held firmly in the gripe of the Federal army. Within her limits was the district of Columbia, the seat of the Government of the United States; through them also ran the high road to the region which was destined to become the principal theatre of war; whilst her

narrow straggling territory, overhung along its whole Chap. IV. northern boundary by free Pennsylvania, was estimated to contain not less than 50,000,000 dollars' worth of slaves. The distant State of Missouri had, like Maryland, a military importance derived from its situation; for the possession of it might be said to command, more or less, Kansas and the great territories of the SouthWest. She never actually seceded, but her Governor and Legislature were secessionist, and the State soon became, and long continued, the scene of desultory hostilities, sustained at first by troops raised within the State and fighting in its name, and later by detached wings of the great Confederate army. These events have been mentioned, for the sake of convenience, a little out of their chronological order. Nor were the acts by which the four seceding States purported to sever themselves from the Union formally completed until some time afterwards. But these acts had in all

1 Virginia

April 17th. Ordinance of Secession passed by Convention (88 to 55). May 23rd. Ordinance ratified by popular vote (128,884 to 32,134). [A considerable portion of Virginia broke off and remained faithful to the Union, and was subsequently erected, with some adjoining counties, into a separate State, under the title of West Virginia. It contained nearly a fourth of the whole white population, and embraced the Valley of the Kanawha and the greater part of the tract west of the Alleghanies sloping down to the Ohio, together with the long narrow strip which runs up between the States of Ohio and Pennsylvania, nearly to the latitude of New York, and to which its shape and position have given the nickname of the "Pan-handle."]

North Carolina—

April 26th. Legislature summoned.

May 1st. Legislature met, and called Convention.

May 21st. Secession Ordinance passed unanimously.

Tennessee

May 7th. Ordinance of Secession passed by the Legislature.

June 8th. Ordinance ratified by popular vote (104,913 to 47,238). [East Tennessee was strongly Unionist.]

Arkansas

May 6th. Ordinance passed by Convention (69 to 1).

Chap. IV. of them been forestalled, not only by popular movements, but by their Governments and Legislatures. On the 25th April the Virginian Convention, in the name of the Commonwealth, had entered into a formal Treaty with the Confederate States, under which, until the Union should be perfected, "the whole military force and military operations, offensive and defensive, of the said Commonwealth in the impending conflict with the United States," were placed under the direction and control of the President of the Confederacy "on the same principles, basis, and footing as if the said Commonwealth were now and during the interval a member of the Confederacy." The Governor of Tennessee was empowered by his Legislature, on the 1st May, to conclude a like Treaty; and the Treaty itself was ratified by the Senate on the 7th. Still earlier the forts on the coast of North Carolina had been seized and armed, and these, with the arsenals of Fayetteville in that State and of Little Rock in Arkansas, were handed over to the Confederate Government.

The United States had within the State of Virginia two valuable possessions, which its revolt threatened with sudden peril, the navy-yard and magazines of Norfolk, and the great arsenal and armoury of Harper's Ferry, situated at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers, whose united waters here break through the most easterly of the long Alleghany ranges and descend towards the sea. On the night of the 18th April the subaltern in charge of the arsenal was apprised that it was about to be attacked by a strong Virginian force, and hastily withdrew the handful of troops under his command, having first set fire to the buildings, destroyed about 15,000 stand of arms, and attempted, but in vain, to blow up the workshops and machinery. Commodore Macauley, who commanded at Norfolk, had recourse to the same desperate expedient. But here the destruction was greater. The noble harbour of Norfolk,