e Charleston
batteries had opened their fire on the fort by the formal order of the
Confederate government, and peaceable secession was, without
provocation, changed to active war. The rebels gained possession of
Charleston harbor; but their mode of obtaining it awakened the
patriotism of the American people to a stern determination that the
insult to the national authority and flag should be redressed, and the
unrighteous experiment of a rival government founded on slavery as its
corner-stone should never succeed. Under the conflict thus begun the
long-tolerated barbarous institution itself was destined ignobly to
perish.

On his journey from Springfield to Washington Mr. Lincoln had said that,
devoted as he was to peace, he might find it necessary "to put the foot
down firmly." That time had now come. On the morning of April 15, 1861,
the leading newspapers of the country printed the President's
proclamation reciting that, whereas the laws of the United States were
opposed and the execution thereof obstructed in the States of South
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas,
by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of
judicial proceedings, the militia of the several States of the Union, to
the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, was called forth to
suppress said combinations and cause the laws to be duly executed. The
orders of the War Department specified that the period of service under
this call should be for three months; and to further conform to the
provisions of the Act of 1795, under which the call was issued, the
President's proclamation also convened the Congress in special session
on the coming fourth of July.

Public opinion in the free States, which had been sadly demoralized by
the long discussions over slavery, and by the existence of four factions
in the late presidential campaign, was instantly crystallized and
consolidated by the Sumter bombardment and the President's proclamation
into a sentiment of united support to the government for the suppression
of the rebellion. The several free-State governors sent loyal and
enthusiastic responses to the call for militia, and tendered double the
numbers asked for. The people of the slave States which had not yet
joined the Montgomery Confederacy--namely, Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and
Delaware--remained, however, more or less divided on the issu