have slavery for the corner-stone." Many of her wealthy slaveholders wanted to reopen the trade in slaves so that they could get negroes cheaper than they could with the present restrictions on that kind of commerce, and one of the Georgia members complained in the convention which nominated Breckenridge, that he had to pay from one to two thousand dollars a head for negroes in Virginia, when he could go to Africa and buy better ones at fifty dollars apiece.

So the South were prepared to welcome the election of Lincoln when it took place in November, 1861, and they did welcome it heartily. When the Republican party in the North was firing cannon, and ringing bells, and building bonfires over their first victory in the nation, the people of Charleston in South Carolina were shaking hands in congratulation, and many hearty cheers went up at the news of Abraham Lincoln's election.

Before Lincoln had been the president elect three months, and almost three months before he took the seat of government, seven States had passed resolutions to go out of the Union. South Carolina led the van, and Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Loui

Jefferson Davis.

siana, and Texas, all followed.
Each State held a convention,
declared that she no longer be-
longed to the United States, and
would not acknowledge its author-
ity. Then these seven met to-
gether and formed a "confeder-
acy" of Southern States, called the
"Confederate States of America,"
and on the 4th of February, 1861,
elected Jefferson Davis of Mis-
sissippi the president, and Alex-
ander Stephens of Georgia vice-
to sever, or cut in two, the nation

president. Thus they proposed
previously known as the United States of America.

Of course you understand that if the United States was a nation, the action of such men was treason, and they were rebels. There are forty counties in England. Suppose the twenty southern counties should say all at once, "We are dissatisfied with the people of the northern counties, and are going to break off and make a nation by ourselves. We are perfectly willing to make a peaceable treaty with the other half of England, and we do not want to fight her, but

if she attempts to prevent our forming a new nation we shall fight her, tooth and nail, till one side is forced to yield." In such a case we should be sure there were TRAITORS in England, and we should call their action treason against the English government.

But the southern part of our country claimed that they were not traitors, because each State was "sovereign and independent ;" that they had voluntarily come together and made a Union, and now were tired of it, wanted to go away, and had a perfect right to go. This was the view the politicians in the South had taken almost from the first. This was the idea of John C. Calhoun. The time had come at last when it had to be tested whether the United States was a nation reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, or a band of petty states who could divide and subdivide at pleasure, till we had thirty or forty small republics, perhaps, on this continent. That was the question which had been brewing ever since the year 1787 when the Federal Constitution was adopted.

The Northern people had no adequate idea how resolved the people of the South were in this matter. Hardly any one among them believed that South Carolina, who led off in this act of secession, really could be in earnest. The North believed in a nation. Even the larger part of the Northern Democrats, who were ready to yield up almost anything for the sake of peace, would have sprung to the rescue of the American flag, if they had seen it about to be hauled down by any members of their own party. To the Northern man the Union meant everything dear to him as a patriot..

On the other hand, the man of South Carolina from childhood had heard of his State and her glory; he boasted of being a "South Carolinian"; he loved the palmetto flag, the emblem of his State. The man of New England, New York, or the States of the Northwest hardly knew if his State had a flag; for him there was but one flag, which he reverenced abroad and at home—the stars and stripes. He did not say "I am an Illinoisian," or a "New Yorker," but declared proudly, "I am an American." You see thus what difficulty these two classes of men had in understanding each other. The Northerner could not believe that the South would really break up the sacred Union; the Southerner could not believe that the Union was anything which the North would fight about. Thus the two opposing parts of the nation stood when the 4th of March, 1861, drew near.

CHAPTER XXXI.

BEGINNING OF HOSTILITIES.

Inauguration Speech of Lincoln. - Coercion. - National Property.

bor. Guns opened on Fort Sumter. The Bombardment. - The Flag hauled down. Intense Excitement. - Patriotism in the North. - Patriotism in the South.

INAUGURATION day came, and Lincoln, standing before the assembled crowd in Washington, read his inaugural address. He had had a grand tour from his simple home in Springfield, Illinois, all the way to Philadelphia, met everywhere by the hearty greetings of a large party of the people. When he reached Philadelphia and went through the customary ceremonies of welcome there, he was informed that he must not go through Baltimore openly. There was a plot discovered by some skillful detectives, to murder him as he passed through that city. Then for the first time the new president was made to feel he was nearing an enemy's land. He refused to believe in this plot at first, but finally yielded and went through Baltimore by night and secretly, in order to frustrate these designs upon his life.

Mr. Lincoln's address was like himself, honest and manly. He told the country that the United States was a government, and that no State could by its own act take herself out of the Union. That to the best of his ability he should faithfully execute the laws of the Union. He assured the Southern people that he had no design. or wish to violate any of their lawful rights, even those which related to slavery, and he and the nation intended to respect all their rights. But he assured them that he must, as the servant of this nation, hold, occupy, and possess all the property belonging to the United States, whether it was situated in the North or the South.

This last declaration was taken up as the signal of war upon the South, and all her people, and her friends in the North, talked about the wickedness of "coercion," or forcing the South to stay in the Union at the cost of bloodshed. The truth was, the United States owned a line of forts extending all along the Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico. There were forts at the entrance of all the large harbors, and the mouths of all important rivers, from Virginia to Louisiana, or the Mississippi. These forts were built, owned,

manned, and furnished by the United States. They did not belong to South Carolina or Florida, any more than to Michigan or Wisconsin. These forts, many of them, had been seized, and were now held by the rebels against the United States government. In Texas the largest part of the United States army were stationed near the Mexican border under command of General Twiggs, who you will remember had been in the Mexican War. This army belonged to the United States; not to Texas, or Georgia, or Massachusetts, or New York. Its officers had been educated at West Point, on the Hudson, at the expense of the country. Its men were clothed and fed by the United States; its officers drew their pay from the Union ; they were its property. Yet, news had already come that General Twiggs had given this army up into the hands of "secessionists "in Texas. Again, during the last days of Mr. Buchanan's presidency, the secretary of war, who had control of guns and cannon and munitions of war belonging to the nation, had been using his power to send arms wherever he chose. So this secretary, who was an ardent secessionist, had sent all the munitions South that he could, without arousing suspicion. From one United States arsenal in Massachusetts alone, he had thus sent away over 100,000 guns. Add to these, that in the seven States now already claiming to be a "confederacy," the secessionists were seizing the arsenals and manufactories that were national property, the national mints, containing United States money, and you see what Mr. Lincoln meant by saying he considered it his duty to hold the property of the United States, and why it brought down on him more bitter hatred and darker threatenings than he had yet heard.

In the harbor of Charleston were several forts. One of these was Fort Moultrie, named for the gallant colonel who had held it in the first years of the Revolution. Another was Fort Sumter, also of Revolutionary fame. When South Carolina began her secession fury, after Lincoln's election, Major Robert Anderson was commanding the forts in the harbor. He was stationed with a little garrison at Moultrie. Fort Sumter was the better and larger fort, and six days after South Carolina had declared herself out of the Union, Major Anderson took his soldiers, provisions, guns, and all that could be moved, over to Sumter, and occupied it. The South Carolinians talked loudly about this, and claimed that Mr. Buchanan had promised not to reinforce the forts, or put any more soldiers in the harbor. On the other hand, Major Anderson asked repeatedly

for provisions and men, if the government wanted to keep their forts. One attempt, had been made to send a ship to his aid, but she had been fired upon in Charleston harbor and retreated, and was finally captured by the rebels, and held by them as their property.

Now Major Anderson sent word to Lincoln that he could not hold the fort unless the government came to his succor. Lincoln answered that the fort should be provisioned. The chiefs of the confederates in Charleston heard this, and on the 12th of April they informed Anderson that the fort must at once be surrendered, or it would be bombarded.

Anderson refused to surrender. He knew a long defense would be hopeless, but he resolved not to haul down his country's flag without a struggle. He had eighty men in the garrison, and a very small

supply of food, and while provisions lasted he thought he could make a defense. On Friday, the twelfth day of April, 1861, the guns from Charleston opened their fire on the walls of Fort Sumter. The rebels had taken possession of Fort Moultrie, and two other fortified points in the harbor, and they had also two floating batteries from which guns were leveled. So, from five points at once, balls rained on the devoted fort.

Major Anderson kept silent for a time and did not return the fire. At last he began to use his guns, but with little effect on his enemies. All his powers were necessarily devoted to defense. There were wooden barracks inside the fort which soon took fire from the bombs thrown by the rebels. These were twice saved- the flames