he land. Next morning,
April 15, came a proclamation from the President. The laws of the United
States, it declared, were opposed and their execution obstructed in
seven States, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the
ordinary course of judicial proceedings; and the militia of the States,
to the number of 75,000 were called to arms for three months to suppress
the combinations and cause the laws to be duly executed.

The North rose as one man to the call. Party divisions were forgotten.
Douglas went to the President and pledged his support. Regiments from
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts hurried to the capital. Every Northern
State hastened to fill its assigned quota of militia. No less promptly
the South rallied to defend the seceding States from invasion. The
Virginia convention voted Secession two days after the President's
proclamation, and the people's vote ratified it by six to one. North
Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas joined the Confederacy. Maryland,
Kentucky, and Missouri, wavered and were distracted, but as State
organizations remained in the Union, while their populations divided.

Constitutional logic, argumentation, distinctions between holding the
national property and invasion, all vanished in the fierce breath of
war. Between union and disunion, argument was exhausted, and the issue
was to be tried out by force. In a day a great peaceful people resolved
itself into two hostile armies.

CHAPTER XXV

THE CIVIL WAR

At the outbreak of war, what the Northerner saw confronting him was an
organized attempt to overthrow the government and break up the nation in
the interest of slavery. This as the essential fact took form in the
circle of fire let loose on a beleaguered fort, and the Stars and
Stripes lowered before an overwhelming force. Close following came the
menace against the national capital, for Washington was believed to be
in imminent peril. A Massachusetts regiment marching to its relief was
assailed by the populace of Baltimore; communication was cut; and the
city which was the centre and symbol of the national life seemed
stretching her hands in appeal to the country's faithful sons. To the
conscience, the heart, the imagination of the North, it was a war of
national self-defense,--a holy war.

What the Southerner saw was an attempt to crush by force a legitimate
exercise of the right of sovereign States to an independent existence.
The typical Southerner, whether he ha