AID FOR THE GOVERNMENT SUPPLIED.

451

corpus were issued for their release. At first some of them were obeyed, but finally, by order of the Government, they were disregarded, and their issue ceased. The most notable of these cases, at the beginning, was that of John Merryman, a member of the Maryland Legislature, who was cast into Fort McHenry late in May. The Chief-Justice of the United States (R. B. Taney), residing in Baltimore, took action in the matter, but General Cadwalader, the commander of the department, refused to obey the mandates of this functionary, as well as that of the inferior judge, and the matter was dropped, excepting in the form of personal, newspaper, and legislative discussions of the subject, the chief questions at issue being, Which branch of the Government has the power to suspend the privilege of the writ? and Do circumstances warrant the exercise of that power? We will not discuss that question here. Many arrests were made; among them a large number of the members of the Maryland Legislature, the Mayors of Baltimore and Washington, Marshal Kane and the Police Commissioners of Baltimore, and a number of other prominent men throughout the country. Within the space of six months after the tragedy in Baltimore, no less than one hundred prisoners of state, to whom the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus was denied, were confined in Fort Lafayette alone.

The Government not only resorted to these extreme measures, but made greater preparations for a conflict of arms, plainly perceiving that insurrection was rapidly assuming the proportions of formidable and extended rebellion. By a proclamation on the 27th of April, the blockade' was extended to the ports of North Carolina and Virginia; and by another proclamation on the 3d of May, the President called into the service of the United States forty-two thousand volunteers for three years; ordered an increase of the regular Army of twenty-two thousand seven hundred and fourteen officers and enlisted men, for not less than one year nor more than three years; and for the enlistment of eighteen thousand seamen for the naval service. This was the first call for volunteers, the former requisition being for the militia of the several States, full one hundred and fifty thousand of whom were organized or were forming at the close of April. The response to this was equally if not more remarkable. The enthusiasm of the people was unbounded. Money and men were offered in greater abundance than the Government seemed to need. The voluntary contributions offered to the public treasury, and for the fitting out of troops and maintaining their families, by individuals, associations, and corporations, amounted, at the beginning of May, to full forty millions of dollars!

Six weeks earlier than this, that sagacious Frenchman, Count Agénor de Gasparin, one of the few foreigners who seemed to comprehend the American people, and the nature and significance of the impending struggle, wrote, almost prophetically, saying:-" At the present hour, the Democracy of the South is about to degenerate into demagogism. But the North presents quite a different spectacle. Mark what is passing there; pierce beneath appearances, beneath the inevitable wavering of a début, so well prepared for

1 See page 372.

2 The Act of 1795, under the authority of which the President called for seventy-five thousand militia, restricted their service to three months. See notes 2 and 3, page 336.

452

MOVEMENTS IN THE NATIONAL CAPITAL.

by the preceding Administration, and you will find the firm resolution of a people uprising. Who speaks of the end of the United States? This end seemed approaching but lately, in the hour of prosperity; then, honor was compromised, esteem for the country was lowered, institutions were becoming corrupted apace; the moment seemed approaching when the confederation, tainted with Slavery, could not but perish with it. Now, every thing has changed in aspect. The friends of America should take confidence, for its greatness is inseparable, thank God! from the cause of justice. Justice can not do wrong. I like to recall this maxim, when I consider the present state of America."

At the middle of May, Washington City was safe, for thousands of wellarmed loyal men were within its borders. Troops were quartered in the immense Patent Office building. The Capitol was a vast citadel. Its legislative halls, its rotunda, and other rooms were filled with soldiery, and its basement galleries were converted into store-rooms for barrels of beef, pork, and other materials for army rations in great abundance. Under the direction of Lieutenant T. J. Cate, of the Massachusetts Sixth, the vaults under the broad

umns like the issues of a smoldering volcano.

terrace on the western front of the Capitol were converted into bakeries, where sixteen thousand loaves of bread were baked every day. The chimneys of the ovens pierced the terrace at the junction of the freestone pavement and the grassy slope of the glacis, as seen in the picture; and there, for months, smoke poured forth in dense black colBefore the summer had

begun, Washington City was an immense garrisoned town, and strong fortifi

1 The Uprising of a Great People: by Count Agénor de Gasparin. Translated by Mary L. Booth. These sentences were written in March, 1861, just after President Lincoln's Inaugural Address reached Europe, and when the legislative proceedings and public meetings in the Free-labor States were just made known there, and gave assurance that the great body of the Nation was loyal and would sustain the incoming Administration. Speaking of the departure of Mr. Lincoln for Washington, and the farewell to his friends and neighbors, mentioned on page 275, the Count exclaims: "What a début for a Government! Have there been many inaugurations here below of such thrilling solemnity? Do uniforms and plumes, the roar of cannon, triumphal arches, and vague appeals to Providence, equal these simple words, Pray for me! We will pray for you.' Ah! courage. Lincoln the friends of freedom and of America are with you. Courage! you hold in your hands the destinies of a great principle and of a great people. Courage! you have to resist your friends and to face your foes; it is the fate of all who seck to do good on the earth. Courage! you will have need of it to-morrow, in a year. to the end; you will have need of it in peace and in war; you will have need of it to avert the compromise, in peace or war, of that noble progress which it is your charge to accomplish, more than in conquests of Slavery! Courage! your rôle, as you have said, may be inferior to no other, not even to that of Washington: to raise up the United States will not be less glorious than to have founded them."

PREPARATIONS OF THE CONSPIRATORS FOR WAR.

453 cations were rapidly growing upon the hills around it. And yet the conspirators still dreamed of possessing it. Two days after their Convention at Montgomery adjourned to meet in Richmond on the 20th of July, . May 23, Alexander H. Stephens, in a speech at Atlanta," in Georgia, after 1861. referring to the occupation of the National edifices at Washington by the soldiery, said: "Their filthy spoliation of the public buildings and the works of art at the Capitol, and their preparations to destroy them, are strong evidences to my mind that they do not intend to hold or defend that place, but to abandon it, after having despoiled and laid it in ruins. Let them destroy it, savage-like, if they will. We will rebuild it. We will make the structures more glorious. Phenix-like, new and more substantial structures will rise from its ashes. Planted anew, under the auspices of our superior institutions, it will live and flourish throughout all ages."

At the beginning of May, by fraud, by violence, and by treachery, the conspirators and their friends had robbed the Government to the amount of forty millions of dollars; put about forty thousand armed men in the field, twenty-five thousand of whom were at that period concentrating in Virginia; sent emissaries abroad, with the name of Commissioners, to seek recognition and aid from foreign powers; commissioned numerous pirates to prey upon the commerce of the United States; extinguished the lights of light-houses and beacons along the coasts of the Slave-labor States, from Hampton Roads to the Rio Grande,' and enlisted actively in their revolutionary schemes the Governors of thirteen States, and large numbers of leading politicians in other States. INSURRECTION had become REBELLION; and the loyal people of the country, and the National Government, beginning to comprehend the magnitude and potency of the movement, accepted it as such, and addressed themselves earnestly to the task of its suppression.

1 The light-houses and beacons seized, and lights extinguished, commencing with that on Cape Henry, in Virginia, and ending with Point Isabel, in Texas, numbered one hundred and thirty-one. Of these, thirteen were in Virginia, twenty-seven in North Carolina, fourteen in South Carolina, thirteen in Georgia, eighteen in Florida, eight in Alabama, twenty-four in Louisiana, and fourteen in Texas.

C.S.A.

TUISIA!]

454

OHIO PREPARING FOR WAR.

CHAPTER XIX.

EVENTS IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.-THE INDIANS.

HILE thousands of the loyal people of New England and of the other Free-labor States eastward of the Alleghanies were hurrying to the field, and pouring out their wealth like water in support of the Government, those of the region westward of these lofty hills and northward of the Ohio River were equally patriotic and demonstrative. They had watched with the deepest interest the development of the conspiracy for the overthrow of the Republic, and when the President's call for the militia of the country to arrest the treasonable movements reached them, they responded to it with alacrity by thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands.

• April 12, 1861.

The Legislature of Ohio, as we have observed, had spoken out early,' and pledged the resources of the State to the maintenance of the authority of the National Government. This pledge was reiterated, in substance, on the 14th of March, when that body, by vote, declared its high approval of President Lincoln's Inaugural Address. On the day when Fort Sumter was attacked," an act of the Legislature, providing for the enrollment of the militia of the State, became a law; likewise another, for the regulation of troops to be mustered into the National service. Provision was also made for the defense of the State, whose peace was liable to disturbance by parties from the Slave-labor States of Virginia and Kentucky, between whom and Ohio was only the dividing line of a narrow river. Appropriations for war purposes were made on a liberal scale; and when the twenty days, allowed by the President in his proclamation for the insurgents to lay down their arms, had expired, a stirring order went out from the Adjutant-General of the State (H. B. Carrington), for the organization of one hundred thousand men as a reserved force; for sagacious observers of the signs of the times, like Governor Dennison, plainly perceived that a great war was impending. The people contributed freely of their means, for fitting out troops and providing for their families. George B. McClellan, who had held the commission of captain by brevet after meritorious services in Mexico, but was now in civil service as superintendent of the Ohio and Mississippi Railway, was commissioned a major-general by the Governor, and appointed commander of all the forces of the State. Camps for rendezvous and instruction were speedily formed, one of the most important of which was Camp Dennison, on the line of the Cincinnati and Columbus Railway, and occupying a position on the pleasant slopes of the hills that skirt

INDIANA READY FOR THE CONFLICT.

455

the Miami Valley, about eighteen miles from Cincinnati. So Ohio began to prepare for the struggle.

The people of Indiana moved as promptly and vigorously as those of Ohio. In March, the vigilant Governor Morton, seeing the storm gathering,

went to Washington and procured about five thousand second-class muskets. These and a few others formed all the means at his command for arming the State, when the President's call reached him on Monday, the 15th of April. The militia of the State were unorganized, and there was no Adjutant-General to whom he might turn for aid, for the incumbent of that office refused to act. At that time there was an energetic young lawyer residing at Crawfordsville, who had served in Mexico at the age of nineteen years, and was well versed in military affairs. In the State Senate, of which he had been a member, he had vainly urged the adoption of measures for organizing the militia of the State. Fond of military maneuvers, he had formed a company and drilled them in the tactics of the Zouaves, several weeks before the famous corps of "Ellsworth's Zouaves" was organized. This lawyer was Lewis Wallace, who became a Major-General of Volunteers at an early period of the war that ensued.

a

April 15,
1861.

Governor Morton called Wallace to his aid. A dispatch summoning him to Indianapolis reached him on Monday evening, while he was trying a cause in Clinton County. He reported to the Governor the next morning. "The President has called on Indiana for six regiments to put down a rising rebellion," said Morton. "I have sent for you to assist me in the business. I want to appoint you Adjutant-General."-"Where is the Adjutant-General's office?" inquired Wallace.-"There is none," responded the Governor.-"Where are the books ?"-" There are none. "_"How many independent companies are there in the State ?"-"I know of but three

0. P. MORTON.