with reinforcements and supplies for Fort Sumter on board, arrived at the bar of Charleston harbor. Floating the national flag, but with the troops under deck, she attempted to steam up the harbor to Fort Sumter. The secessionists, however, had received information of her purpose from one of their agents in the North, and fired on her from Fort Moultrie and a battery on Morris Island. Being struck by a shot, she put about and returned to New York.

On January 14, the South Carolina legislature resolved that "any attempt by the Federal Government to reinforce Fort Sumter will be regarded as an act of open hostility, and a declaration of war."

Col. Isaac W. Hayne [S. C.], as agent of Gov. Francis W. Pickens [S. C.] had come to Washington, on January 12; on the 16th he demanded the surrender of Fort Sumter as a pledge of non-intervention in the affairs of his State. It was, of course, refused.

Federal forts and arsenals were seized by State authority in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and even North Carolina, before ordinances of secession had been passed by these States.

In Florida, soon after the ordinance was passed, Fort Barrancas and the Navy Yard at Pensacola were seized without resistance from the Federal commander, James Armstrong, who also ordered Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer, in charge of Forts Pickens and McRae, to give up these places. The subordinate, however, refused to obey, and, retiring to Fort Pickens, the stronger of the two forts, held out against the enemy. Mr. Dix, Secretary of the Treasury, sent an agent to secure revenue cutters stationed at Mobile and New Orleans, but before his arrival they had been turned over (about the end of January) by their commanders to the State authorities. Secretary Dix, before he had been informed of the surrender, sent a telegram to his agent which became a rallying cry in the North: "If any person attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot."

Toward the end of February, Brigadier-General David E. Twiggs [Ga.], commanding the Department

of Texas, turned over his entire army, fortifications, arms, etc., to Gen. Ben McCulloch, representing the authorities of Texas. It has been computed, by Southern as well as Northern historians (e. g., E. Pollard in his "Southern History of the War," and Horace Greeley in his "American Conflict") that the South, at Lincoln's inauguration, had secured possession of Federal forts, cannon, etc., to the value of $20,000,000; 150,000 Federal rifles, etc., of the latest and most approved patterns, and half of the regular army.

ORGANIZATION OF THE CONFEDERACY

On February 4, 1861, delegates from the seceded States, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, met at Montgomery, Ala. On the 8th the seven States represented were provisionally organized into "The Confederate States of America," and Jefferson Davis [Miss.] and Alexander H. Stephens [Ga.] were elected President and VicePresident respectively of the new Confederacy.

On February 14 a permanent constitution was adopted. It was substantially the same as the Federal Constitution except in the following particulars:

1. President and Vice-President to be chosen for six years; President ineligible for reëlection while in office; he may remove cabinet officers, but no other functionaries, at his pleasure, without referring the matter, with his reasons, to the Senate.

2. Heads of executive departments to have seats in either House with privilege of discussing matters relating to their several departments.

3. No bounties nor duties on importations.

4. Citizens of one State may pass through another State or sojourn there with their slaves and other property; the right of property in such slaves not to be impaired thereby.

5. A slave escaping from one State into another to be delivered up on claim of the owner.

6. New territory may be acquired; in this slavery shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government.

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT DAVIS

On February 17 President Davis arrived at Montgomery, on a special train from Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, having delivered twenty-five speeches to enthusiastic crowds. In these he made such declarations as the following:

"It may be that we will be confronted by war, that the attempt will be made to blockade our ports, to starve us out; but they know little of the Southern heart, of Southern endurance. No amount of privation could force us to remain in a Union on unequal terms. England and France would not allow our great staple [cotton] to be dammed up within our present limits; the starving thousands in their midst would not allow it. We have nothing to apprehend from blockade. But, if they attempt invasion by land, we must take the war out of our territory. If war must come, it must be upon Northern, and not upon Southern, soil. In the meantime, if they are prepared to grant us peace, to recognize our equality, all is well.

"Your border States will gladly come into the Southern Confederacy within sixty days, as we will be their only friends. England will recognize us, and a glorious future is before us. The grass will grow in the Northern cities, where the pavements have been worn off by the tread of commerce. We will carry war where it is easy to advance-where food for the sword and torch await our armies in the densely populated cities; and, though they [the enemy] may come and spoil our crops, we can raise them as before; while they cannot rear the cities which took years of industry and millions of money to build."

On February 18 the President was inaugurated with imposing ceremonies. His Inaugural Address, says Horace Greeley, in his "American Conflict," was a temperate and carefully studied document. Assuming the right of secession as inherent in "the sovereign States now composing this Confederacy," to be exercised whenever, in their judgment, the compact by which they acceded to the Union "has been perverted from the purposes for which it was ordained, and ceased to answer the ends for which it was established," and that its exercise "merely asserted the right which the Declaration of Independence of 1776 defined to be

inalienable," he avers of their recent action that "it is by the abuse of language that their act has been denominated revolution." "They formed a new alliance," he continues, [ignoring their solemn compact in the Federal Constitution by which they had covenanted with each other that "No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation."] The Federal Government is termed by him "the agent through whom they

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY A FACT!!!
Acknowledged by a Mighty Prince and Faithful Ally

[The Prince to his Cabinet: "I am afraid in rascality they will beat us''] From the collection of the New York Historical Society

communicated with foreign nations," which they have now "changed"-that is all. As they had cotton to sell, which the North, with nearly all other civilized countries, wished to buy, their policy was necessarily one of peace; and he argued that the old Union would inevitably and gladly, for cotton's sake, if for no other, cultivate peace with them.

There was an undertone in this Inaugural, however,

which plainly evinced that the author expected nothing of the sort. "If we may not hope to avoid war," says Mr. Davis, "we may at least expect that posterity will acquit us of having needlessly engaged in it. We have entered upon a career of independence, and it must be inflexibly pursued through many years of controversy with our late associates of the Northern States." Hence, he very properly called upon his Congress, in addition to the services of the militia, to provide for a navy, and "a well-instructed, disciplined army, more numerous than would usually be required as a peace establishment."

Mr. Davis carefully refrained from any other allusion to slavery, or the causes of estrangement between the North and the South, than the following:

"With a Constitution differing only from that of our fathers in so far as it is explanatory of their well-known intent, freed from sectional conflicts, which have interfered with the pursuit of the general welfare, it is not unreasonable to expect that the States from which we have parted may seek to unite their fortunes to ours, under the government which we have instituted. For this, your Constitution makes adequate provision; but beyond this, if I mistake not, the judgment and will of the people are that union with the States from which they have separated is neither practicable nor desirable. To increase the power, develop the resources, and promote the happiness of the Confederacy, it is requisite there should be so much homogeneity that the welfare of every portion should be the aim of the whole. Where this does not exist, antagonisms are engendered, which must and should result in separation."

SLAVERY THE CORNERSTONE OF THE CONFEDERACY

ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS

Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President of the "Confederacy," proved far less reticent and more candid. On his return from the convention or congress whereby the "Confederacy" had been cemented, and he chosen its Vice-President, he was required to address a vast assemblage at Savannah, and did so on March 21, in