of all the blood-bought rights of the founders of the
Republic.

It must not be assumed that the President of the United States had
not already calculated on the probabilities of war. The portentous
clouds had been long gathering, and the certain signs of the
impending battle-storm had been discerned by Lincoln and his
advisers. He had prepared, as best he could under the circumstances,
to meet it. The long suspense was now broken. This was some relief.
There were to be no more temporizing, no more compromises, no more
offers of concession to slavery or to disunionists. The doctrine
of the assumed right of a State, at will, and for any real or
pretended grievance, to secede from and to dissolve its relation
with the Union of the States, and to absolve itself from all its
constitutional relations and obligations, was now about to be tried
before a tribunal that would execute its inexorable decree with a
power from which there is no appeal. Mercy is not an attribute of
war, either in its methods or decisions. The latter must stand in
the end as against the conquered. From war there is no appeal but
to war. Time and enlightenment may modify or alter the mandates
of war, but in this age of civilization and knowledge, neither
nations nor peoples move backward. Ground gained for freedom or
humanity, in politics, science, literature, or religion, is held,
and from this fresh advances may be made. Needless cruelty may be
averted in the conduct of war, but mercy is not an element in the
science of destroying life and shedding blood on the battle-field.

Sunday, April 14th (though bearing date the 15th), the same day
Sumter was evacuated, President Lincoln issued his proclamation,
reciting that the laws of the United States had been and then were
opposed and their execution obstructed in the States of South
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and
Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by ordinary
judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by
law; he called for seventy-five thousand of the militia of the
several States of the Union; appealed to all loyal citizens to
maintain the honor, integrity, and existence of the National Union,
and "the perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs
already long enough endured." "The first service," the proclamation
recites, "assigned to the forces called forth will probably be to
repossess the forts, places, an