CHAPTER III.

The Fall of Sumter. - Enthusiasm in Connecticut. - "Coercion" accepted as a Duty. — A Battle-Sunday. - Winsted and New Britain. - Sympathy for the South. - The Call for the First Regiment. - Condition of our Militia. - The Massachusetts Sixth.-. The Towns moving.—The Hartford Companies. — Meriden, New Haven, Danbury, Middletown, Norwich, Derby, Willimantic, Mystic, Putnam, Danielsonville, Bridgeport, Waterbury, New London, Litchfield, Wallingford, Farmington, Salisbury. — The Old Flag.

HE traitors are firing on Sumter!" read the dispatch: "Anderson answers gun for gun!" Men stood startled a moment, and half dis mayed; then, with electric response to the echoing summons, they spoke out with indignation and courage: "Parley is ended; now re-enforce Sumter; avenge the insult; vindicate the nation's honor!"

For six months, the impatient arms of the loyal people had been bound, and their patriotic resentments suppressed; while traitors had gone on from arrogance to menace, and from assault to assault, everywhere unresisted. They had captured and occupied nineteen national forts; had taken possession of scores of Federal revenue-cutters and war-vessels; had appropriated our arsenals and mints; had stolen twelve hundred cannon and a hundred and fifty thousand muskets from the national armories; had caused the destruction of fifteen million dollars' worth of ships and ordnance-stores at Pensacola; had waged war on the government by firing upon and driving back a vessel sent to relieve a starving garrison; had assumed to wrest State after State out of the Union; and had made prisoners, through the treachery of commanders, of more than half of the regular army of the United States,

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all this without eliciting a single shot in defense of the nation. The patience of the Northern peopie was well-nigh exhausted. A majority of the supporters of President Lincoln believed that his policy was too timid and forbearing. They felt that the nation was weaker in April than in March; and that the president still debated what he should have decided, and paused when he ought to act. The demand that the assaulted government should defend itself had been hitherto answered only by new efforts at conciliation, and followed by still grosser insults and outrages.

From the bitterness of these humiliations, and from painful suspense and helpless inactivity, the first gun brought relief. All day Saturday the city streets were crowded, and from the country towns came riding anxious men asking for the news. The bombardment was going on; Anderson was making a brave resistance: little else was known with certainty. But this short message thrilled the State with a sort of angry exultation. The loyal people were of one mind: "Let us settle this trouble now, and not bequeath it to our children." The excitement swept across the State, kindling battle-fires in which the mortification of years was consumed. Doubt was succeeded by enthusiasm. The despairing felt that the Republic was saved. Conservatives who had grappled to the Crittenden Compromise, as the hope of the hour, were stunned by the sudden blow. Men who, by force of party habit, had justified treason in its preliminary offenses, were awed into silence now by the audacity of this act of war: while patriots thanked God, that, if war must come, it had been no longer delayed; and forthwith fell into line for the front. Business was suspended, and men prepared to meet the crisis.

The next day was a battle-Sunday all over the State. The news of the surrender of Sumter was announced in the large towns; and the event was alluded to in sermons, and responded to by congregations, in a manner worthy of Revolutionary times. Ministers prayed that the foes of the nation might be smitten down, and law maintained, and liberty given to

the captive; and urged their hearers to trust in God, and do their duty. The Hartford Daily Post, a Douglas Democratic organ, which had already pronounced heartily against treason, issued extras, and freely sold them within churchdoors without rebuke. The New-Haven Palladium, an able supporter of the administration, sold that day eight thousand extras. In the evening, people throughout the State assembled in unusual numbers at their conference-meetings, and expressed their solemn purpose in address and prayer.

A war-meeting for the evening was announced from some of the pulpits of New Britain, and a great gathering was the result. Resolutions to sustain the government were passed; and a volunteer roll, headed by Frank Stanley, was opened as a nucleus of the first company. "A handsome photograph of Major Anderson, encircled with a laurel wreath, prepared by a lady of New Britain, was presented in a thrilling speech by V. B. Chamberlin, Esq.; the whole audience rising to their feet with the wildest demonstrations of enthusiasm."

A similar meeting was called in West Winsted; and Camp's Hall was filled with an enthusiastic crowd. In the midst of the excitement, Roland Hitchcock, a lawyer, offered a resolution declaring that the president ought to withdraw the United-States troops from the forts within the seceded States, stop the shedding of blood, settle the difficulties honorably by further concessions, and "revive the drooping business interests." He was fiercely hissed down; and the proposition was indignantly and almost unanimously rejected. The meeting adopted a patriotic address; and one hundred young men signed an agreement to go to the war. A subscription-paper was also opened, and seven hundred dollars subscribed for the volunteers.

Preparations for volunteering were made in all the large towns. Excited crowds filled the streets, and thronged telegraph and newspaper offices.

The Hartford Times displayed a good deal of boldness in attempting to stay the rising tide. On Saturday, when

VIEWS OF PUBLIC JOURNALS.

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Sumter was on fire, and Anderson and his intrepid little band were tearing up their garments to make cartridges, in the midst of smoke and flames, the Times reasoned thus:

"But,' say the yield-not-an-inch Republicans, the Southerners fired the first gun.' Under what circumstances? As our fathers in the Revolution declared their independence of Great Britain, so have seven States at the South declared their independence of the Federal Government of the United States. . . . Could that people wait until they were taken by the throat and held in subjection? Their position had been taken. That position was invaded by a powerful force, and to save themselves they acted. . . . In the end, this controversy must be settled by treaty. The paper settlement alone will bring peace. Every battle, and every gun that is fired, complicates it. We cannot hold the South in subjection."

...

Great indignation was expressed against the Times, and also against the Bridgeport Farmer and New-Haven Register; the latter somewhat less emphatic in defense of "the rights of the South." There were angry controversies, and here and there personal collisions, growing out of expressions of disloyal sentiment. On Monday, the Times said,—

"The greater power lies in the States: they are sovereign. The Federal Government is subordinate to the States. South Carolina has repealed her ordinance by which she became a part of the Federal Union. Had she, a sovereign State, a right to do so? We claim she had; for the State had reserved that right, and the reservation is written in the Constitution. We have opposed the policy of fighting State against State, brother against brother; we shall oppose it: for it is that policy which will impoverish the North, and break up the Union."

The Register had just said, "Henceforth these States pass into two republics instead of one;" and, while declaring that "the flag must not be dishonored," it pledged itself to "discountenance the war-spirit."

With these politicians sympathized a considerable number of Democrats, who quietly but sullenly refused to aid in the preparations for battle. Some declaimed against "an abolition war," and, whenever they could get breath during the tumult of these days, feebly demanded that "those who had made the trouble" should constitute the army. Other

Democrats, like Henry C. Deming, Mayor of Hartford, sturdily opposed the use of force, even after Fort Sumter was taken, while the cry was, "On to Charleston!" and pronounced for war only when secession had become a gigantic revolution, threatening immediate advance on the capital, and aiming no longer at independence, but supremacy.1

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During Monday, the people of the State had received the president's first proclamation, calling out, for three months, seventy-five thousand of the militia of the several States to repossess the forts, places, and property" which had been seized; " to maintain the perpetuity of popular government; and to redress wrongs long enough endured." This call was received with earnest satisfaction. The crisis which had come was not unlooked for, and yet it was startling in its suddenness and importance. Until within two days, many had cherished a belief that the disloyal communities would not proceed to the ultimate act of war. No people had ever been so rudely awakened from a long dream of peace. For more than eighty years, we had been devoted to a development of the industrial resources of the State. We believed that a standing army was a standing menace, an invitation The forts on the Sound were dismantled, and falling to ruin. We had hardly cannon enough to usher in the Fourth of July. Not half the young men of the State knew

to war.

1 Mr. Deming was invited to preside at the war-meeting to be held April 19. He declined in a letter, of which the following is an extract: 'I am in favor of maintaining the government in Washington. I am willing to furnish it with the requisite force to defend it in the possession and occupancy of the Federal capital. I will support it in repelling invasion of the territory of any State which still adheres to the Federal Union. On the other hand, I am not willing to sustain it in a war of aggression or invasion of the seceded States. Such a war, to accomplish its avowed purpose of recapturing Fort Sumter and of continuing the occupancy of Fort Pickens, must be a war for conquering, and holding in subjugation, more than three millions of an indomitable race of men."

A week later he presented a flag to one of the regiments, and, within six months, was colonel of the Twelfth Regiment. The Times and Register also declared for the defense of the capital, but against the invasion of any seceded State.

2 By the law of 1795, the president had power to call out the militia of the different States to suppress insurrection or rebellion, provided that no man should be obliged to serve more than three months, or more than thirty days after the next meeting of Congress. So President Lincoln was constrained to issue the three-months' call, and to postpone the assembling of Congress to July 4.