send you, through Mr. T. K. Wharton, a piece of the flag-staff of Fort Sumter, which was struck nine times by the balls and shells of our batteries, and finally came down with the flag attached to it. The piece sent you is intended as the staff of your battalion colors, and I have no doubt that when thus honored and under the protection of our gallant comrades, it will meet with better success."* A few days after this epistle was written the following proclamation appeared from General Beauregard, dated at his headquarters, Department of Alexandria, Camp Pickens, June 5, and addressed to the people of the counties of Loudon, Fairfax and Prince William :-" A reckless and unprincipled tyrant has invaded your soil. Abraham Lincoln, regardless of all moral, legal and constitutional re

octogenarian," did not pass unnoticed at the time. I sincerely regret," wrote General Beauregard, "leaving Charleston, where the inhabitants have given me such a welcome that I now consider it as my second home. I had hoped that when relieved from here it would have been to go to Virginia, in command of the gallant Carolinians, whose courage, patience and zeal I had learned to appreciate and admire. But it seems my services are required elsewhere, and thither I shall go, not with joy, but with the firm determination to do more than my duty, if I can, and to leave as strong a mark as possible on the enemies of our beloved country, should they pollute its soil with their dastardly feet. But rest assured, my dear sir, that whatever happens at first, we are certain to have triumph at last, even if we had for arms only pitch-straints has thrown his Abolition hosts forks and flint-lock muskets, for every bush and hay-stack will become an ambush and every barn a fortress. The history of nations proves that a gallant and free people, fighting for their independence and firesides, are invincible against even disciplined mercenaries at a few dollars per month. What, then, must be the result when its enemies are little more than an armed rabble, gathered together hastily on a false pretence and for an unholy purpose, with an octogenarian at its head? None but the demented can doubt the issue."*

It was about this time that General Beauregard presented to the volunteer battalion of Orleans Guard at New Orleans, of which he was a member, a token of his first achievement at Sumter, with the following note, addressed to the commanding officer of the battalion :-"I

* General Beauregard to General Martin, Charleston, S. C., May 27. 1861. Published in the Charleston Courier.

among you, who are murdering and imprisoning your citizens, confiscating and destroying your property, and committing other acts of violence and outrage, too shocking and revolting to humanity to be enumerated. All rules of civilized warfare are abandoned, and they proclaim by their acts, if not on their banners, that their war cry is 'Beauty and Booty.' All that is dear to man-your honor and that of your wives and daughters-your fortunes and your lives, are involved in this momentous contest. In the name, therefore, of the constituted authorities of the Confederate States-in the sacred cause of constitutional liberty and selfgovernment, for which we are contending-in behalf of civilization itself, I, G. T. Beauregard, Brigadier-General of the

*Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard to Major Numa Augusten, commanding New Orleans Battalion, New Or leans. Headquarters Provisional Army C. S. A., Charles ton, S. C., May 22, 1861.

UNHANDSOME EXPRESSIONS.

Confederate States, commanding at Camp Pickens, Manassas Junction, do make this my proclamation, and invite and enjoin you by every consideration dear to the hearts of freemen and patriots, by the name and memory of your Revolutionary fathers, and by the purity and sanctity of your domestic firesides, to rally to the standard of your State and country; and, by every means in your power, compatible with honorable warfare, to drive back and expel the invaders from your land. I conjure you to be true and loyal to your country and her legal and constitutional authorities, and especially to be vigilant of the movements and acts of the enemy, so as to enable you to give the earliest authentic information at these headquarters, or to officers under his command. I desire to assure you that the utmost protection in my power will be given to you all."

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rapidly than he came; and Scott, the traitor, will be given an opportunity at the same time to try the difference between 'Scott's tactics' and the Shanghai drill for quick movements. Great cleansing and purification are needed, and will be given, to that festering sink of iniquity, that wallow of Lincoln and Scottthe desecrated city of Washington; and many indeed will be the carcasses of dogs and caitiffs that will blacken the air upon the gallows before the great work is accomplished. So let it be."* This was a characteristic specimen of much of the literature of the Southern secession press, particularly in the early period of the war. A few months later, when hard blows succeeded to hard words, such effusions of Billingsgate grew somewhat rare. Even foul-mouthed editors had less to say of Lincoln as an ape and Scott as a traitor. We would not sully our page with these ridiculous ebullitions were they not an essential portion of the history of the times. The attempt to degrade the person and character of the Chief Magistrate in the opinion of the less informed people of the South, was by no means an unimportant part of the vile machinery of the rebellion. Such puerilities and absurdities, gross as they were, undoubtedly had their effect in alienating the citizens from the Government; especially as they were supported by the affected cool contempt of the upper classes.

The atrocious terms of this proclamation, in such striking contrast with the conciliatory addresses of the Union officers, were much commented upon as an indication of the manner in which the war was to be conducted on the part of the rebels. Was this the coming man, the "leader" for whom the Virginia secessionists were clamorous, and whose arrival for the capture of Washington the Richmond Examiner, a short time before, had announced with similar violence and indecency as immediately at hand? "Our people can take it-they will take it," was the language of that fanatical If these unhandsome expressions were journal, "and Scott the arch-traitor, and to be regarded as belonging to the vulLincoln, the beast, combined, cannot pre-gar depreciation common to all communvent it. The just indignation of an out-ities engaged in actual warfare, there raged and deeply injured people will were other more serious declarations of teach the Illinois Ape to repeat his race, the motives or impressions of the comand retrace his journey across the bor- batants and their view of the principles ders of the free-negro States still more * Richmond Examiner, April 23, 1861; ante, p. 150.

A SOUTHERN DIVINE.

The conflict which Dr. Palmer in November regarded as imminent had in May become a reality, though it was not undertaken by the North on the issue set forth by the Southern divine. If the rebellion grew out of slavery, and was, as it was often popularly termed, "the slaveholder's rebellion," the war undertaken by the North, it should not be forgotten, was not for the suppression of the peculiar institution, but for the suppression of the rebellion and the preservation of the Union, a national question overriding all local interests. With this reference to the opinions of the speaker, we may the better appreciate his address to the members of the Washington Artillery. It was customary at the North, at the beginning and in the course of this struggle, to place great reliance on the justice and sanctity of the cause which it was defending, to the neglect at times of more practical suggestions. Here, it may be observed, the same appeals were made and the same religious sanctions invoked. Soldiers," said this reverend divine, "history reads to us of wars which have been baptized as holy; but she enters upon her records none that is holier than this in which you have embarked. It is a war of defence against wicked and cruel aggression

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has been the object of such unrighteous age. It is a war for the maintenance assault through five and twenty years. of the broadest principle for which a free If we are true to ourselves we shall, at people can contend-the right of selfthis critical juncture, stand by it and government. Eighty-five years ago our work out our destiny." fathers fought in defence of the char.tered right of Englishmen, that taxation and representation are correlative. We, their sons, contend to-day for the great American principle that all just government derives its powers from the will of the governed. It is the corner-stone of the great temple which, on this continent, has been reared to civil freedom ; and its denial leads, as the events of the past two months have clearly shown, to despotism, the most absolute and intolerable, a despotism more grinding than that of the Turk or Russian, because it is the despotism of the mob, unregulated by principle or precedent, drifting at the will of an unscrupulous and irresponsible majority. The alternative which the North has laid before her people is the subjugation of the South, or what they are pleased to call absolute anarchy. The alternative before us is, the independence of the South or a despotism which will put its iron heel upon all that the human heart can hold dear. This mighty issue is to be submitted to the ordeal of battle, with the nations of the earth as spectators, and with the God of Heaven as umpire. The theatre appointed for the struggle is the soil of Virginia, beneath the shadow of her own Alleghanies. Comprehending the import of this great controversy from the first, Virginia sought to stand between the combatants, and pleaded for such an adjustment as both the civilization and the religion of the age demanded. When this became hopeless, obeying the instincts of that nature which has ever made her the Mother of

-a war of civilization against a ruthless barbarism which would dishonor the dark ages-a war of religion against a blind and bloody fanaticism. It is a war for your homes and firesides-for your wives and children-for the land which the Lord has given us for a herit

Statesmen and of States, she has opened her broad bosom to the blows of a tyrant's hand. Upon such a theatre, with such an issue pending before such a tribunal, we have no doubt of the part which will be assigned you to play; and when we hear the thunders of your can

non echoing from the mountain passes of Virginia, will understand that you mean, in the language of Cromwell at the castle of Drogheda, 'to cut this war to the heart.'"*

* Address of the Rev. Dr. Palmer to the Washington Artillery, New Orleans, May 27, 1861.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE DEATH OF SENATOR DOUGLAS.

vote second only to that by which the President was elected, and who had every reason to look forward to a long career of usefulness and honor; a patriot who defended with equal zeal and ability the Constitution as it came to us from our fathers, and whose last mission upon earth was that of rallying the people of his own State of Illinois as one man around the glorious flag of the Union, has been called from the scenes of life and the field of his labors. This department

In the midst of the anxieties attending | chief magistracy of the United States a the now inevitable recognition of the state of civil conflict into which the nation had been plunged, the public was suddenly startled by intelligence of the dangerous illness, terminating in a few days in the death of one of the foremost political actors in the great drama. Stephen Arnold Douglas, in the maturity of his mental and physical powers, died of an attack of fever at the City of Chicago, June 3, 1861. Justly considered of national importance at a critical period of affairs, this event was made the follow-recognizing in his decease a loss in coming day the subject of a special circular from the office of the Secretary of War at Washington. "The death of a great statesman in this hour of peril," was the language of Mr. Cameron in this document, "cannot be regarded otherwise than as a national calamity Stephen A. Douglas expired in the commercial capital of Illinois, yesterday morning, at 9 o'clock. A representative of the overpowering sentiment enlisted in the cause in which they are engaged; a man who nobly discarded party for country; a senator who forgot all prejudices in an earnest desire to serve the public; a statesman who lately received for the

mon with the whole country, and profoundly sensible of the grief it will excite among millions of men, hereby advises the colonels of the different regiments to have this order read to-morrow to their respective commands, and suggests that the colors of the republic be draped in mourning in honor of the illustrious dead."

The career of the statesman whose loss the country was thus called upon to deplore would be pronounced an extraordinary one in any other country than America, where similar instances of triumph over poverty in youth and early employment with rapid promotion in