North would be either hopelessly divided or be compelled to recognize a separation.

Mr. Greeley, in his "American Conflict," quotes Mr. Roscoe Conklin, a distinguished member of the 36th and 37th Congresses, and afterwards, a Senator in Congress from the State of New York, as saying when the proceedings of the Convention at Alabama referred to in the preceding chapter, reached Washington, they were hailed with undesigned exultation by the Secessionists still lingering in the halls of Congress; one of whom said to him, triumphantly, "If your President should attempt coercion, he will have more opposition at the North than he can overcome." The writer can attest that the influence of the public meeting, held in the North, opposing coercion, was so dense, at Washington, that like the darkness of Egypt in the days of Pharaoh, it could be felt.

The Confederates, at Charleston, South Carolina, uninfluenced by the conciliatory inaugural of President Lincoln, and being unable to induce Major Anderson in command of the little garrison (74 men) in Fort Sumter, to surrender, opened fire upon it, April 12th, 1861, and continued it vigorously the next night and day, until the Fort was set on fire and badly damaged and Major Anderson was compelled to surrender and evacuate the Fort, but he obtained honorable terms. The following is a

copy of a letter he addressed to the Secretary of War at Washington: Steamship Baltic, off Sandy Hook, April 18, 1861.

The Honorable S. Cameron,

Secretary of War, Washington, D. C. Sir-Having defended Fort Sumter for thirty-four hours, until the quarters were entirely burned, the main gates destroyed, the georgewall seriously injured, the magazine surrounded by flames, and the door closed from the effects of the heat, four barrels and three cartridges of powder only being available, and no provisions but pork remaining, I accepted terms of evacuation offered by Gen. Beauregard, (being the same offered him on the 11th instant, prior to the commencement of hostilities) and marched out of the Fort, on Sunday afternoon, the 14th instant, with colors flying and drums beating, bringing away company and private property, and saluting my flag with fifty guns.

ROBERT ANDErson, Major First Artillery.

On the 15th day of April, three days after the attack upon Fort Sumter, President Lincoln issued a proclamation, in substance, as follows:

"Whereas, 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, Lousiana and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceed ings,or by the powers vested in the marshals by law 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 for the militia of the several States of the Union to the aggregate number of 75,000 in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed. The details for

this object will be immediately communicated to the State authorities through the War Department. I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular Government, and to redress wrongs already long endured. I deem it proper to say that the first service assigned to the forces hereby called forth will probably be to repossess the forts, places and property which have been seized from the Union, and in every event the utmost care will be ob

served, consistently with the object. aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of, or interference with property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens of any part of the country; and I hereby command the persons comprising the combinations aforesaid, to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes, within twenty days from this date.

Deeming that the present condition of public affairs presents an extraordinary occasion, I do hereby, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution, convene both Houses of Congress. The Senators and Representatives are, therefore, summoned to assemble at their respective chambers at 12 o'clock, noon, on Thursday, the 4th day of July next, then and there to consider and determine such measures as, in their wisdom, the public safety and interest may seem to demand.

(After the formal conclusion, the proclamation was signed.)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:

WM. H. SEWARD,

Secretary of State.

AGAIN, "Immediately on the organization of congress (in Dec., 1784), Washington, with a careful discrimation between the offices of that body and the functions of the State, urged through its President that congress should have the western waters well explored, their capacities for navigation ascertained as far as the communications between Lake Erie and the Wabash, and a complete and perfect map made of the country at least as far west as the Miamis, which run into the Ohio and Lake Erie." I Bancroft's Constitutional, History.

Does anybody doubt after reading this, on which side of the question Washington would be if now living, in regard to the construction of the Hennepin canal?

The immensity of the ungranted public domain which had passed from the English crown to the American people, invited them to establish a continental empire of republics. Lines of communication with the western country implied its colonization. In the war, Jefferson, as a member of the legislature, had promoted the expedition by which Virginia conquered the region northwest of the Ohio; as governor he had

taken part in its cession to the United States.

The cession had included the demand of a guarantee to Virginia of the remainder of its territory. This the United States had refused, and Virginia receded from the demand. On the first day of March, 1784, Jefferson, in congress, with his colleagues, Hardy, Arthur Lee and James Monroe, in conformity with full powers from their commonwealth, signed, sealed and delivered a deed by which, with some reservation of land, they ceded to the United States all claim to the territory northwest of the Ohio.

On the same day, before the deed could be recorded and enrolled among the acts of the United States, Jefferson, as chairman of a committee, presented a plan for the temporary government of the western territory from the southern boundary of the United States in the latitude of thirty-one degree to the Lake of the Woods. It is still preserved in the national archives in his own handwriting, and is as completely his own work as the Declaration of Independence. He pressed upon Virginia to establish the meridian of the mouth of the Kanawha as its western boundary,

and to cede all beyond to the United States. To Madison he wrote: "For God's sake push this at the next session of assembly. We hope North Carolina will cede all beyond the same meridian;" his object being to obtain cessions to the United States of all southern territory west of the meridian of the Kanawha.

In dividing all the country northwest of the Ohio into ten States, Jefferson was controlled by an act of Congress of 1780 which was incorporated into the cession of Virginia. No land was to be taken up till it should have been purchased from the Indian proprietors and offered for sale by the United States. In each recipient State no property qualification was required, either of the electors or elected; it was enough for them to be free men, resident, and of full age. Under the authority of Congress, and following the precedent of any one of the States, the settlers were to establish a temporary government, when they should have increased to twenty thousand, they might institute a permanent government, with a member in Congress; having a right to debate, but not to vote; and, when they should be equal in number to the inhabitants of the least populous State, their delegates, with the consent of nine States, as required by the confederation, were to be admitted into the Congress of the United States on an equal footing.

The ordinance contained five other articles: The new State shall remain

forever a part of the United States of America; they shall bear the same relation to the confederation as the original States; they shall pay their apportionment of the federal debts; they shall, in their government, uphold republican forms; and after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor voluntary servitude in any of them.

At that time slavery prevailed throughout much more than half the lands of Europe. Jefferson, following an impulse from his own mind, designed by his ordinance to establish from end to end of the whole country, a north and south line, at which the western extension of slavery should be stayed by an impossible bound. Of the men held in bondage beyond that line, he did not propose the instant emancipation; but slavery was to be rung out with the departing century, so that in all the western territory, whether held in 1784 by Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, or the United States, the sun of the new century might dawn on no slave.

To make the decree irrevocable, he further proposed that all articles. should form a charter of compact, to be executed in Congress under the seal of the United States, to be promulgated, and to stand as fundamental constitutions betweeen the thirteen original States and the new States to be erected under the ordinance.

The design of Jefferson marks an era in the history of universal free

dom. For the moment more was attempted than could be accomplished. North Carolina, in the following June, made a cession of all her western lands, but soon revoked it; and Virginia did not release Kentucky till it became a State of the Union. Moreover, the sixteen years during which slavery was to have a respite, might nurse it into such strength that at the end of them it would be able to defy or reverse the ordinance.

Exactly on the ninth anniversary of the fight at Concord and Lexington, Richard Dobbs Spaight, of North Carolina, seconded by Jacob Read, of South Carolina, moved to "strike out" the fifth article. The presiding officer, following the rule of the times, put the question: "Shall the question stand?" Seven States, and seven only, were needed to carry the affirmative.

Let Jefferson, who did not refrain from describing Spaight as "a young fool," relate what followed: "The clause was lost by an individual vote only. Ten States were present. The four Eastern States, New York and Pennsylvania were for the clause; Jersey would have been for it, but there were but two members, one of whom was sick in his chambers. South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia voted against it. North Carolina was divided, as would have been Virginia, had not one of its delegates been sick in bed."

The absent Virginian was Monroe, who for himself has left no evidence

of such an intention, and who was again absent when in the following year the question was revived, for North Carolina, the vote of Spaight was neutralized by Williamson.

Six States against three, sixteen men against seven, prescribed slavery; Jefferson bore witness against it all his life long. Wythe and himself, as commissioners to codify the laws of Virginia, had provided for gradual emancipation.

When, in 1785, the legislature refused to consider the proposal, Jefferson wrote: "We must hope that an overruling Providence is preparing the deliverence of these, our suffering brethren." In 1786, narrating the loss of the clause against slavery in the ordinance of 1784, he said: "The voice of a single individual would have prevented this abominable crime; Heaven will not always be silent; the friends to the rights of human nature will in the end prevail."

To friends who visited him in the last period of his life, he delighted to renew these aspirations of his earlier years.

In a letter written just forty-five days before his death, he refers to the ordinance of 1784, saying: "My sentiments have been forty years before the public; although I shall not live to see them consummated, they will not die with me; but, living or dying, they will ever be in my most fervent prayer."

The ordinance for the government