the strains of _Yankee Doodle_.

Strange to say, after being four years in Confederate hands, Sumter
was recaptured by the Union forces on the anniversary of its surrender.
It was often bombarded, though never taken, in the meantime.

The fall of Sumter not only fired all Union loyalty but made
Confederates eager for the fray. The very next day Lincoln called
for 75,000 three-month volunteers. Two days later Confederate letters
of marque were issued to any privateers that would prey on Union
shipping. Two days later again Lincoln declared a blockade of every
port from South Carolina round to Texas. Eight days afterwards he
extended it to North Carolina and Virginia.

[Illustration: _GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE_
Photograph. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.]

But in the meantime Lincoln had been himself marooned in Washington.
On the nineteenth of April, the day he declared his first blockade,
the Sixth Massachusetts were attacked by a mob in Baltimore, through
which the direct rails ran from North to South. Baltimore was full
of secession, and the bloodshed roused its fury. Maryland was a
border slave State out of which the District of Columbia was carved.
Virginia had just seceded. So when the would-be Confederates of
Maryland, led by the Mayor of Baltimore, began tearing up rails,
burning bridges, and cutting the wires, the Union Government found
itself enisled in a hostile sea. Its own forces abandoned the Arsenal
at Harper's Ferry and the Navy Yard at Norfolk. The work of demolition
at Harper's Ferry had to be bungled off in haste, owing to shortness
of time and lack of means. The demolition of Norfolk was better
done, and the ships were sunk at anchor. But many valuable stores
fell into enemy hands at both these Virginian outposts of the Federal
forces. Through six long days of dire suspense not a ship, not a
train, came into Washington. At last, on the twenty-fifth, the
Seventh New York got through, having come south by boat with the
Eighth Massachusetts, landed at Annapolis, and commandeered a train
to run over relaid rails. With them came the news that all the
loyal North was up, that the Seventh had marched through miles of
cheering patriots in New York, and that these two fine regiments
were only the vanguard of a host.

But just a week before Lincoln experienced this inexpressible relief
he lost, and his enemy won, a single officer, who, according to
Winfield Scott, was alone worth more than fift