of armed men.

At that moment slavery controlled the President, the Cabinet, the Senate
and the House. And yet immediately after the election, and before the
inauguration of Lincoln, the Secretary of War, Floyd, secretly began the
transfer of munitions of war from the nation's arsenals to the Southern
States.

Late one December day in 1860, a Southern gentleman hastened to the
White House. On the steps he met an old friend who had just left
Buchanan. Waving his hat, he shouted, "This is a glorious day! South
Carolina has seceded!" That night an impromptu banquet was held in
Washington, at which the Southern leaders drank to the success of the
slave empire that was to be founded, and talked about a Southern army, a
Southern navy, the annexation of Mexico and the West India Islands. Then
swiftly followed the secession of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas
and Florida.

Almost every week during the winter of 1861 witnessed the spectacle of
Southern Senators and Representatives saying good-bye to Congress and
announcing the withdrawal of their State from the Union. Those were
days of thick darkness at Washington. Gloom fell upon the North. Already
the shadow of the great eclipse was stealing across the face of Abraham
Lincoln. It seemed as if the government, "conceived in liberty and
dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal," was about
to "perish from the earth." Hamilton had called the Republic "the last,
best hope of earth." Burke had characterized the Constitution "an event
as wonderful as if a new star had arisen on the horizon to shine as
bright as the planets." Now the star was to fall out of the sky! Up to
the day of his inauguration Lincoln could not believe the South would
ever fire on the flag, or take up arms against the Union. "We are
friends, and not enemies--we must not be enemies." But it was not to be
as Lincoln wished. There are some diseases so terrible that they must be
cured by the knife and the cautery. Slavery had fastened on the very
vitals of the South. Therefore, God permitted the surgery of war.

Lincoln's inaugural address on March 4, 1861, caused a certain solemn
hush to fall upon the land. Its logic, the facts it contained, the
principles it presented, were so convincing for the intellect and yet
so suffused with pathos and beauty and majesty, that the people, North
and South alike, stood uncertain and expectant.

But the silence was premonitory. In summer, after a h