heir play and
looked about them for the nearest rallying ground of soldiers.

The President of the United States was quick to seize the favorable
moment to call for 75,000 volunteers. That these troops were to fight
the Confederacy was not questioned for a moment.

The effect of this proclamation on the South was a political earthquake.
In a single day all differences of opinion were sunk in the common
cause. A feeling of profound wonder swept every thoughtful man within
the Southern States. To this moment, even a majority of those who
favored the policy of secession had done so under the belief that it was
the surest way of securing redress of grievances and of bringing the
Federal Government back to its original Constitutional principles. Many
of them believed, and all of their leaders in authority hoped, that a
re-formation of the Union would soon take place in peaceful ways on the
basis of the new Constitution proclaimed at Montgomery. Many Northern
newspapers, led by the New York _Herald_, had advocated this course. The
hope of the majority of the Southern people was steadfast that the Union
would thus be continued and strengthened, and made more perfect, as it
had been in 1789 after the withdrawal of nine States from the Old Union
by the adoption of the Constitution of 1787.

Abraham Lincoln's proclamation shattered all hope of such peaceful
adjustment.

Thousands of the best men in Virginia and North Carolina had voted
against secession. Not one of them, in the face of this proclamation,
would dispute longer with their brethren. Whatever they might think
about the expediency of withdrawing from the Union, they were absolutely
clear on two points. The President of the United States had no power
under the charter of our Government to declare war. Congress only could
do that. If the Cotton States were out of the Union, his act was illegal
because the usurpation of supreme power. If they were yet in the Union,
the raising of an army to invade their homes was a plain violation of
the Constitution.

The heart of the South beat as one man. The cause of the war had been
suddenly shifted to a broader and deeper foundation about which no
possible difference could ever again arise in the Southern States.

The demand for soldiers to invade the South was a bugle call to Southern
manhood to fight for their liberties and defend their homes. It gave
even to the staunchest Union men of the Old South the overt act of an
ope