46 VIRGINIA DRAGOONED. [1861. to take effect till approved by the people; but the day fixed for their voting upon it was six weeks distant, the last Thursday in May. Long before that date, Governor Letcher, without waiting for the verdict of the people, turned over the entire military force and equipment of the State to the Confederate authorities, and the seat of the Confederate Government was removed from Montgomery to Richmond. David G. Farragut, afterward the famous Admiral, who was in Norfolk, Virginia, at the time, anxiously watching the course of events, declared that the State "had been dragooned out of the Union," and he refused. to be dragooned with her. But Robert E. Lee and other prominent Virginians resigned their commissions in the United States service to enter that of their States or of the Confederacy, and the soil of Virginia was overrun by soldiers from the cotton States. Any other result than a vote for secession was therefore impossible. Arkansas followed with a similar ordinance on the 6th of May, and North Carolina on the 21st, neither being submitted to a popular vote. Kentucky refused to secede. For Tennessee and Missouri there was a prolonged struggle. When Fort Sumter was surrendered, the Confederates had already acquired possession of Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbor, Fort Pulaski at Savannah, Fort Morgan at the entrance of Mobile Bay, Forts Jackson and St. Philip below New Orleans, the navy-yard and Forts McRae and Barrancas at Pensacola, the 1861.] THE FIRST CALL FOR TROOPS. 47 arsenals at Mount Vernon, Ala., and Little Rock, Ark., and the New Orleans Mint. The largest force of United States regulars was that in Texas, under command of General David E. Twiggs, who surrendered it in February, and turned over to the insurgents $1,250,000 worth of military property. On the day when Sumter fell, President Lincoln penned a proclamation, issued the next day (Monday, April 15), which declared "that the laws of the United States have been for some time past, and now are, opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law," and called for militia from the several States of the Union to the number of seventy-five thousand. It also called a special session of Congress, to convene on July 4. He appealed "to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already long enough endured." Mr. Lincoln's faith in the people had always been strong; but the response to this proclamation was probably a surprise even to him, as it certainly was to the secessionists, who had assured the Southern people that the Yankees would not fight. The whole North was thrilled with military ardor, and moved almost as one man. The national 48 THE AWAKENING OF THE NORTH. [1861. flag was thrown to the breeze from nearly every court-house, school-house, college, hotel, enginehouse, railway-station, and public building, from the spires of many churches, and from the windows of innumerable private residences. The fife and drum were heard in the streets, and recruiting-offices were opened in vacant stores or in tents hastily pitched in the public squares. All sorts and conditions of men left their business and stepped into the ranks, and in a few days the Government was offered several times as many troops as had been called for. Boys of fifteen sat down and wept because they were not permitted to go, but here and there one dried his tears when he was told that he might be a drummer or an officer's servant. Attentions between young people were suddenly ripened into engagements, and engagements of long date were hastily finished in marriages; for the boys were going, and the girls were proud to have them go, and wanted to send them off in good spirits. Everybody seemed anxious to put forth some expression of loyalty to the national government and the starry flag. School-girls wrote their letters on white paper and used red and blue ink for the alternate lines; while their mothers made "Havelocks" for the soldiers a sort of cape attachment to a cap, to prevent sunstroke in a hot climate. A considerable percentage of the letters that passed through the mails bore patriotic devices on the envelopes. The designs were numberless, and collections of them are now looked upon as curiosities. A favorite one 50 THE AWAKENING OF THE NORTH. [1861. represented a young blue-jacket, with curly hair streaming in the wind, and rolling clouds about him, clinging by his legs and his left hand to the topmast, while with a hammer in his right he nailed the colors to the mast-head. Beneath was the legend, "If any man tries to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot!"-which was a famous despatch sent by General John A. Dix, Secretary of the Treasury in the last days of Buchanan's administration, to a customs officer at New Orleans. The foremost American magazine of that day removed the portrait of a colonial governor that it had borne on its cover from the beginning, and displayed the stars and stripes in its place; and many newspapers put a flag at the head of their columns and kept it there. The papers were lively with great head-lines and double-leaded editorials; and the local poet filled the spare space when there was any-with his glowing patriotic effusions. The closing passage of Longfellow's "Building of the Ship," written a dozen years before, beginning :— "Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!" was in constant demand, and was recited effectively by nearly every orator that addressed a warmeeting. Eminent men of all parties and all professions spoke out for the Union. Stephen A. Douglas, |