1861] Lincoln's Policy 509 ... state sovereignty, the Southerners should be the aggressors if there must be aggression. He stated further, after a consideration of secession from the constitutional standpoint, that he understood a proposed amendment to the Constitution had passed Congress "to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the states, including that of persons held to service." As to such an amendment he declared that he had "no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. . . . In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it." 335. Lincoln's Advisers. The new President gathered Lincoln's about him an able set of advisers. His three rivals for the cabinet. Republican nomination, Seward, Chase, and Cameron, became the heads of the State Department, the Treasury, and the War Department respectively. Seward maintained his place during the war; but Chase was later appointed Chief Justice, and Cameron was displaced at the War Department in 1862 by Edwin M. Stanton, who continued to exercise the office of Secretary of War until after the close of the conflict. Gideon Welles of Connecticut was made Secretary of the Navy, and was ably seconded by Gustavus Vasa Fox, the Assistant Secretary. Seward. At the beginning of his administration, Lincoln was still Lincoln and unfamiliar to those about him. Seward, Chase, and Cameron had long occupied leading positions at Washington, and no doubt felt somewhat uneasy in the guise of advisers to their successful rival. Seward, at all events, regarded himself as the real head of the government, and proceeded to instruct Lincoln as to the policy to be pursued by the administration. The Secretary of State sketched out a bold plan of foreign aggression, quite unmindful of the moral obligations of the nation. In this way he hoped to reunite the Fall of Fort Sumter, April, 1861. Battles and Leaders, I, 40, 83; Rhodes's United States, III, 357. Lincoln's tion. two sections of the Union by thrusting the slavery dispute to one side. He also dallied with several Southerners who styled themselves "Commissioners from the Government of the Confederate States." Lincoln quietly set Seward in his proper place, and did it in a manner that evinced his own capacity to manage affairs and his ability to handle men. During the whole course of the conflict, Lincoln exercised personally the great powers conferred on him — although he always asked the advice of the cabinet on important matters. 336. Uprising of the People, April, 1861.- When Lincoln assumed charge of the government, only three or four military posts in the seceded states remained in federal hands. The most important were Fort Pickens, on the Florida coast, and Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor. An attempt was made to reinforce the garrison of the former, but the officer in command of the vessel containing the soldiers refused to land them. To hold Fort Sumter in the face of the gathering opposition to the federal government was plainly impossible. The administration, however, determined to supply the garrison with provisions, and notified the governor of South Carolina of its intention. On April 12 the Southern guns opened on the fort, which surrendered April 14. Not a man had been injured, but the little garrison had succumbed to starvation and hardships. Great was the rejoicing at Charleston; at last the flag of the United States had been "humbled before the glorious little state of South Carolina," said the governor of that state. The next day, April 15, 1861, President Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers. The document was most admirably written, as were all of Lincoln's state papers, and contains the best statement of the points in controversy from a Northern standpoint. "The laws of the United States," said the President, "have been for some time past, and now are opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the states of South 1861] Uprising of the People 511 Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings. "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 seventy-five thousand, in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed. "And I hereby command the persons composing the said combinations aforesaid to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes, within twenty days from this date." Now at once appeared the results of Southern blunders. Rising of the By their own acts, they had transferred the contest from TO ARMS! the slavery question, upon which the Northerners were not agreed, to the ground of the preservation of the Union, upon which the Northern people were of one mind. Hundreds of thousands of men in the North and in the "border states" cared nothing for North. Battles and TO ARMS! Leaders, VOLUNTEERS! To the Citizens of McLean County: By virtue of the Proclamation of his Excellency, the Gover nor of the State of Filinols, the Sheriff of each County, (where there are a officers in command.) is authorized to rake volunteer companies, and forward them to Springfield, the place of general rendezvous, to join the Filinole army In aid of the Federal Government, in the suppression of rebellion and Insur Pertion Therefore, all persons that will volunteer, are requested to come to my offes in Bhomington, and enlist; and as fast as companies are formed, they will be Immediately forwarded to SpringBe Each Company to consist of Four Corporals Lirulents, Que Company has already been ruled in Bloomington, and I hope to be able to raise one or two companies more in NeLean County. the struggle over slavery. OUR COUNTRY CALLS! Let every Patriot that can leave his hotar and business for a time, promptly obey that call I further propose that everybody inset in Blossington, an MONDAY, 284 inst, at 12 o'clock, to uld and counsel in the aforesaid object Apr 10 JOHN L. ROUTT, SHERIFF OF MCLEAN COUNTY. They saw no reason why I, 84. Rising of the South. The " Border "came out for the Union," and Douglas promised Lincoln his heartiest support. These facts, telegraphed throughout the country, turned many a doubting mind. Nobly Douglas redeemed his pledge: the remaining weeks of his life he traveled through the Northwest, arousing by his eloquence the people there to rally to the support of the Union. In the South, even greater unanimity was displayed. The federal government at last was about to coerce a state, and to the Southerners' minds, filled with the doctrines of Calhoun, this seemed to be an attack on the rights of selfgovernment dear to every man of English blood. 337. The "Border States," 1861. Between the free states," 1861. states of the North and the slave states of the cotton belt which had already seceded (p. 499), there stretched two tiers of slave states, the more southern of which — Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas soon cast in their lot with secession (April to May, 1861). Only one of the border slave states, Delaware, unreservedly joined the North. In two others, Maryland and Kentucky, the politicians endeavored to inaugurate a policy of neutrality which would have been very advantageous to the South; but the Union men were strong in both of them, and with encouragement from the government managed to maintain their states on the side of the North. The people of western Virginia had no sympathy with the secessionists of the eastern part of that state; they held a convention of their own and, with the help of a small federal army, seceded from Virginia, and later on (1863) were admitted to the Union as the state of West Virginia, although not without straining a point of constitutional interpretation. Missouri. In Missouri, the contest was for some time doubtful: the old native element was strongly in favor of secession, but a large body of more recent comers, mainly Germans, were as heartily in favor of the Union cause. Fortunately, there were two men in the state able and willing to use whatever power they had for the Union. These were Francis P. Blair and Captain Nathaniel Lyon, the commander of the United 1861] Strength of North and South 513 States arsenal at St. Louis. They acted with such promptitude and with so much skill that the state was saved for the Union, although not without a prolonged struggle in which Lyon lost his life. It was not, however, until after the defeat of the Confederates at Pea Ridge in March, 1862, that the question of the control of the state was definitely settled in favor of the North. batants. 338. Military Strength of the North and South. - The Strength of preservation of the northern border states to the cause of the comfreedom and union, and the secession of West Virginia from Virginia, reduced the area to be conquered, and greatly impaired the strength of those in rebellion against the federal authorities. The slave states, all told, contained twelve million inhabitants; the states which seceded contained less than nine millions. Of these only five and one half millions were whites, in comparison with a white population in the loyal states of twenty-two millions. There were but two million eight hundred thousand adult white males in the Confederate states, and the federal government had on its muster rolls more than one million men in May, 1865. How, then, did it happen that the secessionists were not crushed at the outset? Why did the contest endure for four years? were Southern government. In the first place, the whole population of the seceded Policy of the states was utilized for war. The able-bodied men forced into the ranks at first by the violence of public opinion and later by a ruthless conscription law. The old men, the women, and the children remained at home with the bulk of the slaves, and bent all their energies to supplying the soldiers with food and supplies. But as the men were killed or kept in Northern prisons, there were no more to take their places in the fighting line. As state after state was conquered, the resources of the Confederate government visibly diminished, and as the blockade became more effective, the supplies of the necessities of modern warfare failed. The Southerners over-exerted themselves at the outset; in the beginning they presented a stern front to "the invader"; |