e the fighting at Sumter, knowing that the mere act of
the Confederates in firing upon the flag would bring to his aid a united
North.

Secretary Toombs was one man in the Montgomery Cabinet who was not
deceived by Seward's sophistries. He knew the temper of Mr. Lincoln
better than Mr. Seward did. He appreciated the feeling at the North, and
gave his counsel in the Davis Cabinet against the immediate assault upon
Sumter. There was a secret session of the Cabinet in Montgomery. Toombs
was pacing the floor during the discussion over Sumter, his hands behind
him, and his face wearing that heavy, dreamy look when in repose. Facing
about, he turned upon the President and opposed the attack. "Mr.
President," he said, "at this time, it is suicide, murder, and will lose
us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest
which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions, now quiet, will
swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the
wrong; it is fatal." He clung to the idea expressed in his dispatches to
the commissioners, that "So long as the United States neither declares
war nor establishes peace, the Confederate States have the advantage of
both conditions." But just as President Lincoln overruled Secretary
Seward, so President Davis overruled Secretary Toombs.

No event in American history was more portentous than the first gun
fired from Fort Johnson at 1.30 o'clock in the morning of April 12,
1861. As the shell wound its graceful curve into the air and fell into
the water at the base of Sumter, the Civil War was an accomplished fact.
Major Anderson replied with his barbette guns from the fort. He had but
little more than 100 men, and early in the engagement was forced to rely
entirely upon his casemate ordinance. The Confederate forces numbered
about five thousand, with thirty guns and seventeen mortars, and served
their guns from the batteries on Mount Pleasant, Cummings Point, and the
floating battery. Fort Sumter was built on an artificial island at the
mouth of Charleston Harbor, and was about three and a half miles from
the city. It had cost the government one million dollars, and had not
been entirely completed at the time of the bombardment.

The excitement in Charleston at the opening gun was very great. People
rushed from their beds to the water-front, and men and women watched the
great duel through their glasses. The South had gone into the war with
all the fervor o