ipitate flight, took possession of the capital, and, continuing his
expedition, scattered, after a slight skirmish, a small rebel military
force which had hastily collected at Boonville. Rapidly following these
events, the loyal members of the Missouri State convention, which had in
February refused to pass a secession ordinance, were called together,
and passed ordinances under which was constituted a loyal State
government that maintained the local civil authority of the United
States throughout the greater part of Missouri during the whole of the
Civil War, only temporarily interrupted by invasions of transient
Confederate armies from Arkansas.

It will be seen from the foregoing outline that the original hope of the
Southern leaders to make the Ohio River the northern boundary of their
slave empire was not realized. They indeed secured the adhesion of
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, by which the
territory of the Confederate States government was enlarged nearly one
third and its population and resources nearly doubled. But the northern
tier of slave States--Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and
Missouri--not only decidedly refused to join the rebellion, but remained
true to the Union; and this reduced the contest to a trial of military
strength between eleven States with 5,115,790 whites, and 3,508,131
slaves, against twenty-four States with 21,611,422 whites and 342,212
slaves, and at least a proportionate difference in all other resources
of war. At the very outset the conditions were prophetic of the result.

XV

Davis's Proclamation for Privateers--Lincoln's Proclamation of
Blockade--The Call for Three Years' Volunteers--Southern Military
Preparations--Rebel Capital Moved to Richmond--Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee and Arkansas Admitted to Confederate States--Desertion of Army
and Navy Officers--Union Troops Fortify Virginia Shore of the
Potomac--Concentration at Harper's Ferry--Concentration at Fortress
Monroe and Cairo--English Neutrality--Seward's 21st-of-May
Despatch--Lincoln's Corrections--Preliminary Skirmishes--Forward to
Richmond--Plan of McDowell's Campaign

From the slower political developments in the border slave States we
must return and follow up the primary hostilities of the rebellion. The
bombardment of Sumter, President Lincoln's call for troops, the
Baltimore riot, the burning of Harper's Ferry armory and Norfolk
navy-yard, and the interruption of railroad