dged fact, and the name of the United States of America had no
more authority than that of Jefferson Davis and Company, dealers in
all kinds of repudiation and anarchy. For more than a month after
the inauguration of President Lincoln there seemed to be a kind of
interregnum, during which the confusion of ideas in the Border States as
to their rights and duties as members of the "old" Union, as it began
to be called, became positively chaotic. Virginia, still professing
neutrality, prepared to seize the arsenal at Harper's Ferry and the
navy-yard at Norfolk; she would prevent the passage of the United
States' forces "with a serried phalanx of her gallant sons," two
regiments of whom stood, looking on while a file of marines took seven
wounded men in an engine-house for them; she would do everything but her
duty,--the gallant Ancient Pistol of a commonwealth. She "resumed her
sovereignty," whatever that meant; her Convention passed an ordinance
of secession, concluded a league offensive and defensive with the
rebel Confederacy, appointed Jefferson Davis commander-in-chief of
her land-forces and somebody else of the fleet she meant to steal at
Norfolk, and then coolly referred the whole matter back to the people
to vote three weeks afterwards whether they _would_ secede three weeks
before. Wherever the doctrine of Secession has penetrated, it seems to
have obliterated every notion of law and precedent.

The country had come to the conclusion that Mr. Lincoln and his cabinet
were mainly employed in packing their trunks to leave Washington, when
the "venerable Edward Ruffin of Virginia" fired that first gun at Fort
Sumter which brought all the Free States to their feet as one man.
That shot is destined to be the most memorable one ever fired on this
continent since the Concord fowling-pieces said, "That bridge is ours,
and we mean to go across it," eighty-seven Aprils ago. As these began a
conflict which gave us independence, so that began another which is to
give us nationality. It was certainly a great piece of good-luck for the
Government that they had a fort which it was so profitable to lose.
The people were weary of a masterly inactivity which seemed to consist
mainly in submitting to be kicked. We know very well the difficulties
that surrounded the new Administration; we appreciate their reluctance
to begin a war the responsibility of which was as great as its
consequences seemed doubtful; but we cannot understand how