CAUSES OF THE WAR—SLAVERY, STATE RIGHTS, SECTIONAL FEELING—JOHN BROWN—ELECTION OF LINCOLN—SECESSION OF SOUTHERN STATES—"SHOOT HIM ON THE SPOT"—PENSACOLA—MAJOR ROBERT ANDERSON—SUMTER OCCUPIED—THE "STAR OF THE WEST"—SUMTER BOMBARDED AND EVACUATED—THE CALL TO ARMS.

On the 9th of January, 1861, the Star of the West, a vessel which the United States Government had sent to convey supplies to Fort Sumter, was fired on by batteries on Morris Island, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and was compelled to withdraw.

RIVER GUNBOAT
(A CONVERTED NEW YORK FERRYBOAT).

The bombardment of Fort Sumter began on April 12th, the fort was surrendered on the 13th and evacuated on the 14th. On April 19th the Sixth Massachusetts regiment, which had been summoned to the defence of the national capital, was attacked, en route, in the streets of Baltimore.

Meanwhile, several Southern States had passed ordinances seceding from the Union, and had formed a new union called the Confederate States of America. Many Government forts, arsenals, and navy yards had been seized by the new Confederacy; and by midsummer a bloody civil war was in progress, which for four years absorbed the energies of the whole American people.

What were the causes of this civil war?

The underlying, fundamental cause was African slavery—the determination of the South to perpetuate and extend it, and the determination of the people of the North to limit or abolish it. Originally existing in all the colonies, slavery had been gradually abolished in the Northern States, and was excluded from the new States that came into the Union from the Northwestern Territory. The unprofitableness of slave labor might, in time, have resulted in its abolition in the South; but the invention, at the close of the last century, of Eli Whitney's cotton-gin, transformed the raising of cotton from an almost profitless to the most profitable of the staple industries, and as a result of it the American plantations produced seven-eighths of all the cotton of the world. African labor was necessary to it, and the system of slavery became a fixed and deep-rooted system in the South.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET.

The self-interest thus established led the South, in the face of Northern opposition to slavery which might make an independent government necessary to them, to insist on the sovereignty of the individual States, involving the right to secede from the Union. The Constitution adopted in 1789 did not determine the question as to whether the sovereignty of the States or that of the central government was paramount, but left it open, to be interpreted according to the interests involved, and to be settled in the end by an appeal to the sword. In the earlier history of the country the doctrine of State sovereignty was most advocated in New England; but with the rise of the tariff, which favored the manufacturing East at the expense of the agricultural South, New England passed to the advocacy of national sovereignty, while the people of the South took up the doctrine of State Rights, determined to act on it should a separation seem to be necessary to their independence of action on the issue of slavery.

From this time onward there was constant danger that the slavery question would so imbitter the politics and legislation of the country as to bring about disunion. The danger was imminent at the time of the Missouri agitation of 1820-21, but was temporarily averted by the Missouri Compromise. The Nullification Acts of South Carolina indicated the intention of the South to stand on their State sovereignty when it suited them. The annexation of Texas enlarged the domain of slavery and made the issue a vital one. The aggressiveness of the South appeared in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854; and the Dred Scott Decision in 1857, giving the slaveholder the right to hold his slaves in a free State, aroused to indignant and determined opposition the anti-slavery sentiment of the North. The expression in this decision, that the negro had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect," brought squarely before the people the issue of manhood liberty, and afforded a text for preaching effectively the gospel of universal freedom.

The absence of intercourse between the North and the South, and their radically different systems of civilization, made them like two different peoples, estranged, jealous and suspicious. The publication of sectional books fostered animosities and perpetuated misjudgments and misunderstandings; and the interested influence of demagogues, whose purposes would be furthered by sectional hatred, kept alive and intensified the sectional differences.

There was little feeling of fraternity, then, to stand in the way when the issues involved seemed to require the arbitrament of war, and it was as enemies rather than as quarrelling brothers, that the men of the North and the South rallied to their respective standards.

INTERIOR OF FORT SUMTER AFTER THE BOMBARDMENT IN 1863—FROM GOVERNMENT PHOTOGRAPH.
(Presented to participants in Sumter Celebration, April 14, 1865.)

An episode which occurred about a year before the war, which was inherently of minor importance, brought to the surface the bitter feeling which was preparing the way for the fraternal strife. John Brown, an enthusiastic abolitionist, a man of undoubted courage, but possessing poor judgment, and who had been very prominent in a struggle to make Kansas a free State, in 1859 collected a small company, and, invading the State of Virginia, seized the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry. His expectation was that the blacks would flock to his standard, and that, arming them from the arsenal, he could lead a servile insurrection which would result in ending slavery. His project, which was quixotic in the extreme, lacking all justification of possible success, failed miserably, and Brown was hung as a criminal. At the South, his action was taken as an indication of what the abolitionists would do if they secured control of the Government, and the secessionist sentiment was greatly stimulated by his attempt. At the North he became a martyr to the cause of freedom; and although the leaders would not at first call the war for the Union an anti-slavery war, the people knew it was an anti-slavery war, and old John Brown's wraith hung over every Southern battlefield. The song,

"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
His soul is marching on."

became a battle-cry, sung at every public meeting, sending recruits to the front, and making the echoes ring around the army campfires.

So long as the Democratic party, which was in political alliance with the South, retained control of the Federal Government, there was neither motive nor excuse for secession or rebellion. Had the Free Soil Party elected Frémont in 1856, war would have come then. When the election of 1860, through Democratic dissension and adherence to several candidates, resulted in the election of Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the Free Soilers, the die was cast, and the South prepared for the struggle it was about to precipitate.

CHARLESTON HARBOR.

THE PALMETTO FLAG.

THE CONFEDERATE FLAG.

The day after the election, on November 7th, 1860, the Palmetto flag, the ensign of the State of South Carolina, was raised at Charleston, replacing the American flag. High officials in the Government, in sympathy with the Southern cause, had stripped the Northern arsenals of arms and ammunition and had sent them to Southern posts. The little standing army had been so disposed as to leave the city of Washington defenceless, except for a few hundred marines and half a hundred men of ordnance. The outgoing Administration was leaving the national treasury bankrupt, and permitted hostile preparations to go on unchecked, and hostile demonstrations to be made without interference. So little did the people of the North realize that war was impending, that Southern agents found no difficulty in making purchases of military supplies from Northern manufacturers. Except for the purchases made by Raphael Semmes in New England, the Confederacy would have begun the war without percussion caps, which were not manufactured at the South. With every advantage thrown at the outset in favor of the South and against the North, the struggle began.

The Southern leaders had been secretly preparing for a long time. During the summer and fall of 1860, John B. Floyd, the Secretary of War, had been sending war material South, and he continued his pernicious activity until, in December, complicity in the theft of some bonds rendered his resignation necessary. About the same time the Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb, the Secretary of the Interior, Jacob Thompson, and the Secretary of State, Lewis Cass, withdrew from the cabinet. On the election of Lincoln, treasonable preparations became more open and more general. These were aided by President Buchanan's message to Congress expressing doubt of the constitutional power of the Government to take offensive action against a State. On December 20, an ordinance of secession was passed by the South Carolina Legislature; and following this example, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Virginia seceded in the order named. Virginia held on till the last; and while a popular vote was pending, to accept or reject the action of the Legislature, the seat of government of the Confederate States, established in February at Montgomery, Ala., was removed to Richmond, the capital of Virginia. Governor Letcher turned over to the Confederates the entire military force and equipment of the State, which passed out of the Union without waiting for the verdict of the people. This State was well punished by becoming the centre of the conflict for four years, and by political dismemberment, loyal West Virginia being separated from the original commonwealth and admitted to the Union during the war.

During the fall and winter of 1860-61, the Southern leaders committed many acts of treasonable aggression. They seized United States property, acting under the authority of their States, until the formation of the Confederacy, when the central government became their authority. In some of these cases the Federal custodians of the property yielded it in recognition of the right of the State to take it. In some cases they abandoned it, hopeless of being able to hold it against the armed forces that threatened it, and doubtful of support from the Buchanan Administration at Washington. But there were noble exceptions, and brave officers held to their trusts, and either preserved them to the United States Government or released them only when overpowered.

In December, 1860, the rebels seized Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, the arsenal at Charleston, and the revenue cutter William Aiken; in January, the arsenals at Mount Vernon, Ala., Apalachicola, Fla., Baton Rouge, La., Augusta, Ga., and many forts, hospitals, etc., in Southern ports. By February they had gained such assurance of not being molested in their seizures of Government property, that everything within their reach was taken with impunity. So many of the officers in active service were in sympathy with the South, that it frequently required only a demand for the surrender of a vessel or a fort—sometimes not even that—to secure it. One of these attempted seizures gave rise to an official utterance that did much to cheer the Northern heart. John A. Dix, who in January, 1861, succeeded Cobb as Secretary of the Treasury, sent W. H. Jones, a Treasury clerk, to New Orleans, to save to the Government certain revenue cutters in Southern ports. Jones telegraphed the secretary that the captain of the cutter McClelland refused to give her up, and Dix thereupon sent the following memorable despatch:

"Tell Lieutenant Caldwell to arrest Captain Breshwood, assume command of the cutter, and obey the order I gave through you. If Captain Breshwood, after arrest, undertakes to interfere with the command of the cutter, tell Lieutenant Caldwell to consider him as a mutineer and treat him accordingly. If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot."

These determined words were among the few that were uttered by Northern officials that gave the friends of the Union any hope of leadership against the aggression of the seceding States; and they passed among the proverbial expressions of the war, to live as long as American history.

A SUMTER CASEMATE DURING THE BOMBARDMENT.

The firmness of Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer had prevented the surrender of Fort Pickens, in Pensacola Harbor, Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico, when it was demanded with some show of force, in January, 1861.

Meanwhile, an event was preparing, in which the loyalty, courage, and promptness of a United States officer was to bring to an issue the question of "bloodless secession" or war. The seizures of Government property here and there had excited indignation in the loyal North, but no general, effective sentiment of opposition. But at the shot that was fired at Sumter, the North burst into a flame of patriotic, quenchless fury, which did not subside until it had been atoned for on many a battlefield, and the Confederate "stars and bars" fell, never to rise again.

Lieutenant-Colonel Gardner had been in command at Charleston Harbor, S. C., and when he saw the secessionists preparing to seize the forts there, so early as November, 1860, he applied to Washington for reinforcements. Upon this, at the request of Southern members of Congress, Secretary of War Floyd removed him, and sent in his place Major Robert Anderson, evidently supposing that that officer's Kentucky origin would render him faithful to the Southern cause. But his fidelity to the old flag resulted in one of the most dramatic episodes of the war.

On reaching his headquarters at Fort Moultrie, Major Anderson at once applied for improvements, which the Secretary of War was now willing and even eager to make, and he appropriated large sums for the improvement of both Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumter, but would not increase the garrison or the ammunition. It soon became apparent that against a hostile attack Fort Moultrie could not be held, as it was commanded from the house-tops on Sullivan's Island, near by, and Major Anderson decided to move his garrison across the harbor to Fort Sumter, which, unlike Moultrie, was unapproachable by land. The secessionists in Charleston were active and watched suspiciously every movement made by the military, and the latter were constantly on guard to prevent surprise and capture of the fort. The preparations for removal to Sumter were made with the greatest caution. So well had Major Anderson kept his purpose secret, that his second in command, Captain Abner Doubleday, was informed of it only when ordered to have his company ready to go to Fort Sumter in twenty minutes. The families of the officers were sent to Fort Johnson, opposite Charleston, whence they were afterward taken North.

For the ostensible purpose of removing these non-combatants to a place of safety—a step to which the now well-organized South Carolina militia could make no objection—Anderson's quartermaster, Lieutenant Hall, had chartered three schooners and some barges, which were ultimatelvy used to transport supplies from Moultrie to Sumter. Laden with these supplies, the transports started for Fort Johnson, and there awaited the signal gun which was to direct them to land at Sumter. The guns of Moultrie were trained to bear on the route across the harbor, to be used defensively in case the movement was detected and interfered with.

The preparations completed, at sunset on December 26, the troops, who had equipped themselves in the twenty minutes allowed them, were silently marched out of Fort Moultrie and passed through the little village of Moultrieville, which lay between the fort and the point of embarkation. The march was fortunately made without observation, and the men took their places in rowboats which promptly started on their momentous voyage. After several narrow escapes from being stopped by the omnipresent guard boats, which were deceived into supposing the troop boats to contain only laborers in charge of officers, the party reached Fort Sumter. Here they found crowds of laborers, who were at work, at the Government's expense, preparing Sumter to be handed over to the Southern league. These men, most of them from Baltimore, were nearly all secessionists, and had already refused to man the fort as soldiers for its defence. They showed some opposition to the landing of the troops, but were promptly driven inside the fort at the point of the bayonet, and were presently shipped on board the supply schooners and sent ashore, where they communicated to the secession authorities the news of Major Anderson's clever ruse. The signal gun was fired from Sumter, the supplies were landed, and Fort Sumter was in the hands of the loyal men who were to immortalize their names by their heroic defence of it.

Capt. T. Seymour. 1st Lieut. G. W. Snyder. 1st Lieut. J. C. Davis. 2d Lieut. R. K. Meade. 1st Lieut. T. Talbot.
Capt. A. Doubleday. Major R. Anderson. Surg. S. W. Crawford. Capt. J. G. Foster.
MAJOR ANDERSON AND OFFICERS DEFENDING FORT SUMTER.

GUSTAVUS V. FOX,
Commanding the Relief Expedition to Fort Sumter;
afterward Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

Sixty-one artillerymen and thirteen musicians, under command of seven or eight officers, constituted the slender garrison. Many of these officers subsequently rose to distinction in the service of their country, in which some of them died. Major Anderson became a major-general and served for a while in his native Kentucky, but was soon compelled by failing health to retire. Captains Abner Doubleday, John G. Foster and Truman Seymour, Lieut. Jefferson C. Davis and Dr. S. Wiley Crawford, the surgeon, became major-generals, and were in service throughout the war; Lieut. Norman J. Hall became colonel of the Seventh Michigan Volunteers, and was thrice brevetted in the regular army for gallantry, especially at Gettysburg; Lieuts. George W. Snyder and Theodore Talbot received promotion, but died early in the war; and Edward Moale, a civilian clerk who rendered great assistance, afterward received a commission in the regular army. One only of the defenders of Sumter afterward joined the Confederacy; this was Lieut. Richard K. Meade, who yielded to the tremendous social and family pressure that carried so many reluctant men to the wrong side when the war began. Commissioned in the rebel army, he died in 1862.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT,
Commanding U. S. Army, 1861.

At noon on December 27, Major Anderson solemnized his occupancy of Sumter by formally raising the flag of his country, with prayer by the chaplain, Rev. Matthias Harris, and military ceremonies.

The sight of the national ensign on Sumter was quickly observed from a troop ship in the harbor, which hastened to the city with the news, not only that Anderson had moved from Moultrie to Sumter, but also that he was heavily reinforced, the sixty soldiers thronging the parapet making so good a show as to give the impression of a much larger number. At this news Charleston was thrown into a ferment of rage and excitement. South Carolina troops were at once sent, on December 27, to take possession of Castle Pinckney, the seizure of which was perhaps the first overt act of war on the part of the secessionists. This was followed by the rebel occupation of Forts Moultrie and Johnson, which were gotten into readiness for action, and shore batteries, some of them iron clad, were planted near Moultrie and on Cummings Point, an extremity of Morris Island near to Sumter; so that by the time the preparations were completed, Anderson's gallant little band was effectively covered on four different sides.

But the rebels were not relying wholly on measures for reducing Sumter in order to secure it. It was diplomacy rather than war which they expected would place in their hands all the government property in Charleston Harbor. On the very day of Anderson's strategic move across the harbor, three commissioners arrived in Washington for the purpose of negotiating for the peaceable surrender to South Carolina of all the forts and establishments. But the telegraphic news, which reached Washington with the commissioners, that the loyal Anderson was doing his part, met with such patriotic response in the North as effectively to interfere with the commissioners' plans. What Buchanan might have released to them under other circumstances, he could not give them after Major Anderson had taken steps to protect his trust.

Once within the fort, the Sumter garrison set vigorously to work to put it in a defensive condition. The Government work on the fort was not completed, and had the Southerners attacked it at once, as they would have done but for the expectation that the President would order Anderson to return to Moultrie, they could easily have captured it by assault. But they still hoped for "bloodless secession," and deferred offensive action. There were no flanking defences for the fort, and no fire-proof quarters for the officers. There was a great quantity of combustible material in the wooden quarters, which ultimately terminated the defence; for the garrison was rather smoked out by fire, than either starved out or reduced by shot and shell. The engineer officers were driven to all sorts of expedients to make the fort tenable, because there was very little material there out of which to make proper military defences. The workmen had left in the interior of the unfinished fort a confused mass of building material, unmounted guns, gun-carriages, derricks, blocks and tackle. Only two tiers of the fort were in condition for the mounting of heavy artillery—the upper and lower tiers. Although the garrison was severely taxed in performing the excessive guard duty required by their perilous situation, they yet accomplished an enormous amount of work—mounting guns with improvised tackle; carrying by hand to the upper tier shot weighing nearly one hundred and thirty pounds each; protecting the casemates with flag-stones; rigging ten-inch columbiads as mortars in the parade grounds within the fort, to fire on Morris Island; and making their quarters as comfortable as the circumstances admitted. The guns of the fort were carefully aimed at the various objects to be fired at, and the proper elevation marked on each, to avoid errors in aiming when the smoke of action should refract the light.

To guard against a simultaneous attack from many sides, against which sixty men could make only a feeble defence, mines were planted under the wharf where a landing was most feasible, to blow it up at the proper time. Piles of paving stones with charges of powder under them, to scatter them as deadly missiles among an attacking party, were placed on the esplanade. Metal-lined boxes were placed on the parapet on all sides of the fort, from which musketry-fire and hand-grenades could be thrown down on the invaders directly beneath. Barrels filled with broken stone, with charges of powder at the centre, were prepared to roll down to the water's edge and there burst. A trial of this device was observed by the rebels, who inferred from it that Sumter was bristling with "infernal machines" and had better be dealt with at long range.

HARPER'S FERRY.

The discomforts and sufferings of the garrison were very great. Quarters were lacking in accommodations; rations were short, and fuel was scanty in midwinter. The transition from the position of friends to that of foes was not immediate, but gradual. After the move to Sumter, the men were still permitted to do their marketing in Charleston; for all that Anderson had then done was to make a displeasing change of base in a harbor where he commanded, and could go where he pleased. Presently market privileges were restricted, and then prohibited altogether; and even when, under the expectation of action at Washington satisfactory to the South, the authorities relaxed their prohibition, the secessionist marketmen would sell nothing to go to the fort. Constant work on salt pork, with limited necessaries and an entire absence of luxuries, made the condition of the garrison very hard, and their conduct worthy of the highest praise.

Anderson has been criticised for permitting the secessionists to build and arm batteries all around him, and coolly take possession of Government property, without his firing a shot to prevent it, as he could easily have done, since the guns of Sumter commanded the waterways all over the harbor. But it is easier now to see what should have been done than it was then to see what should be done. Anderson did not even know that he would be supported by his own Government, in case he took the offensive; and the reluctance to begin hostilities was something he shared with the leaders on both sides, even down to the time of Lincoln's inaugural, in which the President said to the people of the South: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors." The fact of Anderson's Southern birth, while it did not interfere with his loyalty, did make him reluctant to precipitate a struggle which he prayed and hoped might be averted. Had the issue of war been declared at the time, freeing him to do what he could, he could have saved Sumter. As it was, the preparations for reducing Sumter went on unmolested.

Instead of yielding to the demand of the South Carolina commissioners for Anderson's return to Moultrie, President Buchanan permitted the organization of an expedition for the relief of Sumter. But instead of sending down a war vessel, a merchant steamer was sent with recruits from Governor's Island, New York. The Star of the West arrived off Charleston January 9, and as soon as she attempted to enter the harbor, she was fired on from batteries on Morris Island. Approaching nearer, and coming within gun-shot of Moultrie, she was again fired on. At Sumter, the long roll was beaten and the guns manned, but Anderson would not permit the rebel fire to be returned. The Star of the West withdrew and returned to New York. Explanations were demanded by Anderson, with the result of sending Lieutenant Talbot to Washington with a full statement of the affair, there to await instructions. The tacit truce thus established enabled the preparation of Sumter to be completed, but the rebel batteries also were advanced.

Then began a series of demands from Charleston for the surrender of the fort. The secessionists argued with Anderson as to the hopelessness of his case, with the Washington Government going to pieces, and the South determined to have the fort and exterminate the garrison; and still another commission was sent to Washington, to secure there a settlement of the question, which was invariably referred back to Anderson's judgment.


MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. DIX.	GENERAL DIX'S FAMOUS DESPATCH.

The winter was passed in this sort of diplomacy and in intense activity, within the fort and around it. The garrison shared the general encouragement drawn from the accessions to the cabinet of strong and loyal men, such as John A. Dix and Joseph Holt, to replace the secessionists who had resigned. The Charleston people continued their loud demands for an attack on Sumter. The affair of the Star of the West, and the organization of the Confederate Government in February, had greatly stimulated the war spirit of the North, and it was felt that the crisis was approaching. Charleston people began to feel the effects of blockading their own channel with sunken ships, for their commerce all went to other ports.

With the inauguration of Lincoln on March 4, the South learned that they had to deal with an Administration which, however forbearing, was firm as a rock. Indications of a vigorous policy were slow in reaching the anxious garrison of Sumter, for the new President was surrounded with spies, and every order or private despatch was quickly repeated throughout the South, which made him cautious. But the fact that he had determined to reinforce Sumter, and to insist on its defence, did soon become known, both at the fort and in Charleston; and on April 6, Lieutenant Talbot was sent on from Washington to notify Governor Pickens to that effect. This information, received at Charleston April 8, was telegraphed to the Confederate Government at Montgomery, and on the 10th General Beauregard received orders from the rebel Secretary of War to open fire at once on Sumter.

Instantly there was renewed activity everywhere. The garrison, inspired by the prospect of an end to their long and wearisome waiting, were in high spirits. The Confederates suddenly removed a house near Moultrie, disclosing behind it a formidable masked battery which effectually enfiladed the barbette guns at Sumter, which, although the heaviest there were, had to be abandoned. On the afternoon of the 11th, officers came from Beauregard to demand the surrender of the fort, which they learned would have to yield soon for lack of provisions. At three A.M. of the 12th, General Beauregard sent word that he would open fire in one hour.

He kept his word. At four o'clock the first gun of the war was fired from the Cummings Point battery on Morris Island, aimed by the venerable Edmund Ruffin, of Virginia, one of the fathers of secession. It was a good shot, the shell penetrating the masonry of the fort and bursting inside. At this signal, instantly the batteries opened on all sides, and the firing became an almost continuous roar.

But, as yet, Sumter made no reply. The artillery duel was not to be a matter of hours, and there was no hurry. Breakfast was served to officers and men, and was eaten amid a continual peppering of the fort with balls and shells from columbiads and mortars. After this refreshment the men were told off into firing parties, and the first detachment was marched to the casemates, where Capt. Abner Doubleday aimed the first gun fired on the Union side against the Southern Confederacy. It was fired appropriately against the Cummings Point battery which had begun the hostilities; and it struck its mark, but did no damage. The heaviest guns in Sumter being useless, the fort was at a disadvantage throughout the fight, from the lightness of its metal. Notwithstanding Major Anderson's orders that the barbette guns should be abandoned, Sergeant John Carmody, disappointed at the effects produced by the fire of the fort, stole out and fired, one after another, the heavy barbette battery guns. Roughly aimed, they did little mischief; but they scared the enemy, who brought all their weight to bear now on this battery. Captains Doubleday and Seymour directed the firing from Sumter, and were assisted by Lieut. J. C. Davis and Surgeon Crawford, who, having no sick in hospital, volunteered his active services, and hammered away on Fort Moultrie.

By the middle of the morning the vessels of the relieving fleet, sent in pursuance of Lincoln's promise, were sighted outside the bar. Salutes were exchanged, but it was impossible for the vessels to enter the unknown, unmarked channel. This expedition was commanded by Capt. Gustavus V. Fox, afterward Assistant Secretary of the Navy, who had fitted it out with the coöperation of patriotic civilians—G. W. Blunt, William H. Aspinwall, Russell Sturgis, and others. The vessels arriving on the morning of April 12th were the war ship Pawnee, under Commodore Rowan, and the transports Baltic and Harriet Lane. The Pocahontas, Captain Gillis, arrived on the 13th. Knowing in advance the impossibility of entering the harbor with these vessels, a number of launches had been brought, with the intention of running in the reinforcements in these, under cover of night and protected by the guns of Sumter. Except for the delay of the Pocahontas, which carried the launches, this would have been attempted on the night of the 12th, when the garrison anxiously expected the new arrivals. Postponed until the 13th, it was then too late, as by that time Sumter had been surrendered.

The expectation of these reinforcements, the fear of a night assault by the enemy, and the difficulty of deciding whether any boats that might approach would contain friends to be welcomed or enemies to be repulsed, made the night of the 12th a most anxious one for the garrison. But neither friends nor enemies appeared, and after a breakfast of pork and water, on the morning of the 13th, a momentous day's fighting began.

AN ALEXANDRIA ANTE-BELLUM RELIC.

By nine o'clock in the morning fire broke out in the officers' quarters, and it was learned that the hostile batteries were firing red-hot shot. Discovering the flames, the enemy redoubled their firing. It was impossible, even were it desirable, to save the wooden quarters, and, after one or two attempts to quench the flames, they were allowed to burn. Precautions were taken to secure the powder magazines from danger by cutting away the woodwork and spreading wet blankets. Many barrels of powder were rolled out for use. But finally a shot struck the door of the magazine and locked it fast, cutting off further supplies of ammunition. Powder that could not be protected was thrown overboard, but some of it lodging at the base of the fort was ignited by the enemy's shot, and exploded, blowing a heavy gun at the nearest embrasure out of battery. A trench was dug in front of the magazine, and filled with water.

So many of the men were required to attend to these precautions, that the firing from Sumter slackened up almost to cessation, leading the enemy to think they had given up. The fire became intense, driving some of the men outside the fort for air, until the thick-falling missiles drove them in again; and, combined with the bursting shells, all this produced a scene that was terrific. As the fire subsided for want of fuel to burn, the damage was disclosed. A tower at an angle of the fort, in which shells had been stored, had been entirely shattered by the bursting of the shells. The wooden gates at the entrance to the fort were burned through, leaving the way open for assault, and other entrances were now opened in the same way.

Shortly after noon the flag was shot away from its staff. A tremendous amount of ammunition had been wasted by the rebels in the ambitious effort to lower the flag, and at last it was successful. But the exultation of the enemy was cut short by the plucky action of Peter Hart, a servant, who had been allowed to join Major Anderson at the fort on condition that he should remain a non-combatant. Making a temporary flagstaff of a spar, he nailed the flag to it and tied it firmly to the gun-carriages on the parapet, accomplishing his feat under the concentrated fire with which the enemy sought to prevent it.

Supposing the fall of the flag to have been a token of surrender, ex-Senator Wigfall, of Texas, made his appearance at the fort about two P.M., announced himself as an aid to General Beauregard, and requested an interview with Major Anderson. He begged that the bloodshed might cease, and was told that there had been none at Sumter. He offered Anderson honorable terms of evacuation, and then withdrew.

At Wigfall's request, a white flag had been displayed during his presence at the fort, and the firing ceased. Observing this, General Beauregard sent a boat containing Colonels Chestnut, Lee, and Pryor, and Captain Miles, to inquire whether he surrendered. A long parley ensued, during which these officers said that Wigfall had not been in communication with Beauregard; upon which Major Anderson said, "Very well, gentlemen, you can return to your batteries," and announced that he would run up his flag and renew his fire. But at their request he agreed to delay this until they could see General Beauregard, and they withdrew.

That evening, another boat-load of officers came, bringing Beauregard's confirmation of the terms of evacuation that had been discussed with Wigfall, although permission to salute the United States flag was granted with much hesitation. It was then arranged that Anderson should leave Fort Sumter on the following day, taking all his men and arms and personal baggage, and saluting the flag.

Early on the morning of Sunday, April 14, all was made ready for the departure. The firing of the salute was a matter of some danger, as there was so much fire still about the fort that it was risky to lay ammunition down, and sparks of fire floated in the air. Fifty guns were fired before the flag was lowered. In reloading one of them, some spark that had lodged in the piece prematurely discharged it, instantly killing the gunner, Daniel Hough. The fire from the muzzle dropping on the cartridges piled below exploded those also, seriously injuring five other men. This was the only life lost at Sumter, and the first life lost in the war; and, with the exception of one man wounded by a bursting shell, these wounded men received the only casualties of the brave little garrison that defended Fort Sumter.

The men were formed in company, banners were flung to the breeze, the drums beat "Yankee Doodle," and the order was given to march through the charred gateway to the transport that lay at the dock in readiness to carry them to the Baltic, on which they sailed to New York.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, C. S. A.

When they reached their destination, they were lionized by their enthusiastic countrymen. Steam whistles and cheers greeted their passage through the harbor; comforts, long a stranger to them, awaited them at Fort Hamilton, where they were greeted in the name of a grateful people by the people's spokesman, Henry Ward Beecher; and the newspapers sang their praises in one harmonious chorus.

When Fort Sumter was evacuated, it presented very much the exterior appearance that it did before the bombardment—a few holes knocked in the masonry were all that the comparatively light artillery then brought to bear on it could accomplish. Occupied by the Confederates after the evacuation, it remained in their hands until the end of the war. When, in 1863, General Q. A. Gillmore bombarded Charleston, Fort Sumter was reduced to a pile of bricks and mortar; but such a quantity of cannonballs and shells were poured into its débris as to form an almost solid mass of iron, practically impregnable. Sumter never was reduced by artillery fire, and fell into Federal hands again only when Charleston fell before Sherman's march to the sea.

On the conglomerate pile which constituted the ruins of the fort, a dramatic scene of poetic justice occurred on April 14, 1865, the fourth anniversary of the evacuation of Sumter. An expedition was sent by the Government to Charleston Harbor to celebrate the recapture by replacing the national flag on Fort Sumter. The ship Arago bore the officials in charge of the ceremony, and many invited guests, among whom were William Lloyd Garrison and the English George Thompson, leading abolitionists. A patriotic oration was pronounced by Henry Ward Beecher; and by the hand of Anderson, now major-general, the same flag which he had lowered in 1861 was drawn to the peak of the flagstaff, while Sumter's guns and those of every battery in the harbor that had fired on that flag fired a national salute of one hundred guns. The flag was riddled with holes, but, as the orator of the day pointed out, as symbolic of the preserved Union, not a single star had been shot away. Peter Hart, the brave man who had reset the flag during the bombardment, was present; and the Rev. Mr. Harris, who read prayers at the first raising, pronounced the benediction on the resurrection of the ensign of the nation.

The shot that was fired on Sumter was the signal for a nation to rise in arms. That Sunday on which Sumter was evacuated was a memorable day to all who witnessed the intense excitement, the patriotic fury of a patient people roused to white-hot indignation. As on a gala day, the American flag suddenly appeared on every public building and from innumerable private residences. Crowds surged through the streets, seeking news and conference. The national flag was thrown to the breeze from nearly every court-house, school-house, college, hotel, engine-house, railway station and public building, from the spires of many churches, and from the windows of innumerable private residences. The fife and drum were heard in the streets, and recruiting offices were opened in vacant stores or in tents hastily pitched in the public squares. All sorts and conditions of men left their business and stepped into the ranks, and in a few days the Government was offered several times as many troops as had been called for. Boys of fifteen sat down and wept because they were not permitted to go, but here and there one dried his tears when he was told that he might be a drummer or an officer's servant. Attentions between young people were suddenly ripened into engagements, and engagements of long date were hastily finished in marriages; for the boys were going, and the girls were proud to have them go, and wanted to send them off in good spirits. Everybody seemed anxious to put forth some expression of loyalty to the national government and the starry flag. In the Ohio senate, on Friday, the 12th, a senator announced that "the secessionists are bombarding Fort Sumter." "Glory to God!" exclaimed a woman in the gallery, breaking the solemn silence which briefly followed the announcement. This was Abby Kelly Foster, an active abolitionist, who discerned that at last the final appeal had been taken on the slavery question—the appeal to the sword—from the triumphant issue of which would come the freedom for which she and her associates had contended, and which they believed could come in no other way.

"WAR GOVERNORS" OF THE NORTHERN STATES.

On Monday, April 15, President Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five thousand militia from the several States "to suppress this combination against the laws, and to cause the laws to be duly executed."

The response to this call was immediate, and within the week some of the troops thus summoned were in Washington.

While forts and arsenals were being seized by the Confederates all over the South, while batteries to reduce Fort Sumter were being constructed and armed, what had been doing at Washington city, the capital of the nation?

CHAPTER II.

PREPARATION FOR CONFLICT.

DEFENCELESS CONDITION OF WASHINGTON—SECESSION SYMPATHIZERS IN OFFICE—VOLUNTEERS IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA—COL. CHARLES P. STONE—PROTECTION OF PUBLIC OFFICES AND GUARDING OF COMMUNICATIONS—UPRISING OF THE PEOPLE—RESPONSE OF THE MILITIA—THE SIXTH MASSACHUSETTS IN BALTIMORE—THE NEW YORK SEVENTH REACHES WASHINGTON—DEATH OF COLONEL ELLSWORTH—SOUTHERN MILITARY AGGRESSION—HARPER'S FERRY CAPTURED—GOSPORT NAVY YARD BURNED AND EVACUATED.

During the interval between the election and the inauguration of President Lincoln, a very alarming condition of affairs existed at the national capital. The administration was in the hands of men who, even those who were not actively disloyal, were not Republicans, and did not desire to assume responsibility for the crisis which the Republican success at the polls had precipitated.

The Government service was honeycombed with secession sentiment, which extended from cabinet officers down to department clerks. Always essentially a city of Southern sympathies, Washington was filled with the advocates of State Rights. The retiring Democratic President, James Buchanan, in addition to a perhaps not unnatural timidity in the face of impending war and a reluctance to embroil his administration in affairs which it properly belonged to the incoming administration to settle, was also torn with conflicting opinions as to the constitutional questions involved, especially as to his power to coerce a sovereign State. Turning to his cabinet for advice, he was easily led to do the things that simplified the Southern preparations to leave the Union.

It has been told that the regular army troops had been sent away from Washington, leaving a mere handful of marines on duty there. It became a problem for loyal men to devise means for the maintenance of order at the seat of Government. It being the policy of the Government at that time to do nothing to provoke hostilities, it was deemed unwise to bring regular troops openly into Washington. There was no regularly organized militia there; only a few independent companies of doubtful, or unascertained, loyalty.

The aged Gen. Winfield Scott was in command of the army in 1860, and appreciating that trouble would come either from continued acquiescence in the aggressions of the South or from a show of force, he advised the President to quietly enroll the loyal people of the District of Columbia for the guardianship of the capital. For this duty he called in Charles P. Stone, a graduate of West Point and a veteran of the Mexican war, who was made Inspector-General of the District of Columbia, with the rank of colonel.

Colonel Stone took measures to ascertain the sentiments of the existing independent military companies. With admirable diplomacy he disarmed such of them as were found to be disloyal. Some of them he found to be in excellent condition of drill and equipment, by connivance of the Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, and they were well aware that it was their destiny to help defend the South against the "coercion" of the Yankees. Opposition from the War Department to Colonel Stone's measures ceased with Floyd's resignation, and under the new Secretary of War, Joseph Holt (afterward Lincoln's Attorney-General), he was able to enroll in a few weeks thirty-three companies of infantry volunteers and two troops of cavalry, under trustworthy leaders. These were recruited from neighborhoods, from among artisans, and from fire companies. All this was done with the discretion required by the strained condition of public feeling, which was such that, as General Scott said to Colonel Stone, "a dog-fight might cause the gutters of the capital to run with blood." As the time for Lincoln's inauguration approached, it became safe to move more openly; and by the 4th of March a company of sappers and miners and a battery had been brought down from West Point, while thirty new companies had been added to the volunteer force of the District.

WASH-DAY IN CAMP.

GUARDING THE SUPPLY TRAIN.

LAST MOMENTS OF JOHN BROWN.

John Brown of Ossawatomie, spake on his dying day:
"I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in slavery's pay,
But let some poor slave-mother, whom I have striven to free,
With her children, from the gallows stair, put up a prayer for me!"

John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die:
And lo! a poor slave-mother, with her little child, pressed nigh;
Then the bold blue eye grew tender, and the old harsh face grew mild,
As he stooped between the crowding ranks, and kissed the negro's child!

J. G. Whittier.

In the first enthusiasm over the dramatic incidents attending the beginning of hostilities, the great services rendered by these troops were overlooked by the public. Abraham Lincoln's journey to Washington was beset with such danger that the last stage of it was made secretly, in advance of the published programme, and there was great rejoicing when it was announced that the President was "safe in Washington." He could not have been safe there except for the presence of Colonel Stone's volunteers. Trouble was apprehended at his inauguration. But the dispositions made by Colonel Stone secured peace and quiet for that ceremonial in a city teeming with traitors and would-be assassins. The advance to Washington of the troops called out by Lincoln's proclamation of April 15 was opposed in Maryland, regiments were attacked in the streets of Baltimore, and communicating railroad bridges were burned in order that no more troops for the subjugation of the South might pass through that border city. The South was flocking to arms, stimulated by the desire of seizing Washington. To a delegation that called on the President to protest against the passage of troops through Baltimore, Mr. Lincoln summed up the situation by saying: "I must have troops for the defence of the capital. The Carolinians are marching across Virginia to seize the capital and hang me. What am I to do? I must have troops, I say; and as they can neither crawl under Maryland nor fly over it, they must come across it."

During all this troubled time the District volunteers were the only reliance for the security of the public property, for guarding the approaches to the city, and for keeping open the communications for the entrance of the coming troops. They were among the first to be mustered into the United States service, and among the first to advance into Virginia.

LONG BRIDGE—OVER THE POTOMAC, AT WASHINGTON.
The planks were laid loose on the beams, and at night they were taken up, so that the bridge could not be crossed by the Confederate cavalry that hovered about the capital.

To secure the public buildings against a rising among the secessionists living in Washington, the volunteer companies and the regular army batteries were conveniently posted, the bridges and highways leading to the city were guarded, and signals were arranged for the concentration at any given point of the eight thousand men who now constituted the garrison of the capital. Provisions were collected and stored, many of them in the Capitol building, and, to such extent as the force warranted, Washington was considered secure unless a Southern army was marched against it. And this impending danger was daily increasing. On April 17, Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, had called for thirty-two thousand troops, and had offered letters of marque to vessels to attack American commerce. The arrival of the militia called out by President Lincoln's proclamation was anxiously awaited.

Almost before the boom of the guns that were fired on Sumter had ceased, military preparations were actively under way in nearly every city and village in the North. The uniformed militia regiments were promptly filled up to their full numbers by new enlistments. Home Guards were organized in country towns, to defend their homes should the war be waged in the North, and to man afresh, when necessary, the companies already sent out. To fife and drum, the ununiformed farmers marched up and down the village green, temporarily armed with shot-guns and smooth-bore rifles, acquiring proficiency in "Hardee's Tactics" under the direction of old militia officers who had shone resplendent on former "training days." Neither custom nor regulations prescribing any particular uniforms, the greatest variety of fancy was shown in the equipment of the volunteers. Some adopted the zouave uniform, which had become popular through the then recent war between France and Austria and the memories of Magenta and Solferino. Garibaldi was a popular hero of the day, and the red shirts of his trusty men were another of the uniforms particularly favored. The war enthusiasm extended to the women and children, and sewing circles were organized for the making of many useful, and also many useless, articles for camp and hospital. The "havelocks"—a cap-cover and cape combined—however useful in India, were not wanted in America. Later, when there were sick and wounded to be cared for, these organizations of women were of inestimable service in preparing lint, bandages, and delicacies for the hospitals.

Prompt to discern the coming appeal to arms, John A. Andrew, the famous "war governor" of Massachusetts, had begun to recruit, arm, and equip his State militia as early as February, 1860, and by the time the call for troops came he had thirteen thousand men ready, not only to go to the front, but to furnish their own camp equipage and rations. Of these, nearly four thousand responded to the first call for three-months' volunteers. The first regiment to start for Washington was the Sixth Militia, Col. Edward F. Jones, which left Boston on April 17, only three days after the fall of Sumter. The passage of the train bearing this regiment was one long ovation from Boston to Philadelphia. At the latter city, as at New York, the men were received with enthusiastic hospitality, welcomed, fed, and plied with good things for their already overstocked haversacks; and it began to seem as though war were one continuous picnic. At least until the defence of Washington should begin, they were under no apprehension of trouble, until, on approaching Baltimore, on April 19, the anniversary of the Revolutionary battle of Lexington, the officers were warned that the passage of the regiment through that city would be forcibly opposed by a mob, which was already collected and marching about the city, following a secession flag. Colonel Jones ordered ammunition to be distributed, and, passing through the cars in person, he warned the men that they were to pay no attention to abuse or even missiles, and that, if it became necessary for them to fire on the mob, they would receive orders to that effect from their commandants.

The passage of trains through Baltimore at that period was by horse power across the city, from one depot to another. The horses being quickly attached as soon as the locomotive was taken off, cars carrying about two-thirds of the regiment were driven rapidly over the route; but to intercept the remaining four companies the mob barricaded the tracks, and it became necessary for these to abandon the cars and cover the remaining distance on foot. At once they became the target for showers of stones thrown by the mob, and in order to lessen the need of armed resistance, the officers gave the order to proceed at the double-quick. It was a mistake, but a common one when citizen soldiers are dealing with a mob; the most merciful as well as the wisest course being to scatter the mob promptly by a warning, followed by the promised volley. The mob thought they had the troops on the run, and were encouraged to believe that they either dared not shoot or that they were without ammunition. The missiles were followed with pistol shots, at which one soldier fell dead. Then the order to fire was given to the troops, and several of the crowd, rioters and spectators, fell. The mayor of Baltimore joined the officers at the head of the column, to give his authority to its progress, and also to tell the officers to defend themselves. Instead of being faced about to confront the mob, the troops were marched steadily forward, turning about as they advanced and delivering a desultory fire, which, however, did not deter the mob from continuing its attack. At last, Marshal Kane, of the Baltimore police, interposed with a company of policemen between the rear of troops and the rioters, formed a line, and ordered the mob back on penalty of a pistol volley. This was so effective as to practically end the affair, and without further serious disturbance the detachment joined their comrades at the Camden station, and boarded the train that took them to Washington. The regiment's loss was four killed and thirty-six wounded. The men were furious over the affair, and it required all the authority of the colonel to keep them from leaving the cars and taking vengeance on Baltimore for the death of their comrades. Arrived at Washington, the first regiment to come in response to the call of the President, they were quartered in the Senate Chamber.

EPISCOPAL CHURCH, ALEXANDRIA, VA.
General George Washington and General Robert Lee attended this church.

PROVOST-MARSHAL'S OFFICE, ALEXANDRIA, VA.

After this incident, the mayor and police of Baltimore, who had done their duty handsomely, with the approval of the governor destroyed the tracks and railway bridges leading into the city, that there might be no repetition of such scenes; and the troops that followed—the Twenty-seventh Pennsylvania (which, unarmed, had reached Baltimore with the Sixth Massachusetts, but had to turn back), the Eighth Massachusetts under Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, and the famous Seventh New York—had to reach Washington by way of Annapolis. The Seventh, under Colonel Lefferts, was the first home regiment to leave New York City, and nothing could exceed the enthusiasm of the demonstrations that accompanied its march down Broadway. To greet its passage out of the city to the front, all business was suspended, and the population turned en masse into the streets. Boxes of cigars and other luxuries were thrust into the hands of the men as they passed down Broadway in a triumphal march such as has never been surpassed in the annals of the city. There was a certain dramatic element, new at the time, and scarcely repeated during the war, in this departure of a regiment composed literally of the flower of a great and wealthy city, representing its best elements, social and commercial. When General (then Major) McDowell mustered them in at Washington, he said to one of the captains: "You have a company of officers, not privates;" and out of the less than one thousand men composing this command, over six hundred, mostly privates, afterward became officers in the Union army. Among these were such names as Abram Duryea, who organized "Duryea's Zouaves;" Egbert L. Viele, Noah L. Farnam, Edward L. Molineux, Alexander Shaler, Louis Fitzgerald, Philip Schuyler, FitzJames O'Brien; Robert G. Shaw, who fell at Fort Wagner, leading to the assault his Massachusetts regiment, which was the first colored regiment to be organized under State authority; and Theodore Winthrop, whose death at Big Bethel, as a brave officer and man of letters, was one of the conspicuous casualties of the early days of the war.

These troops were taken on transports from Philadelphia to Annapolis, another town of Southern sympathies, where, except for the hospitality of the United States Naval Academy, they were most unwelcome. From that point they made their way, at first by train, and then, being obstructed by the destruction of railroads and railroad bridges, by forced marches, until they reached Annapolis Junction, where they were met by a regiment sent out from Washington to meet them, and thence proceeded by rail again. The strict discipline of Colonel Lefferts, to which they owed their successful pioneer work in opening the way to the capital, took them in review past President Lincoln at the White House before they breakfasted, and they had no let-up on the hardship of their service until they were quartered in the House of Representatives, where they were subsequently sworn into the service of the Government.

This episode is worth recounting, since it was the determined advance of these troops—the Eighth Massachusetts, under Colonel Hinks, accompanying them—in spite of rumors of a large secessionist force between them and Washington, that made access to the seat of government practicable for the regiments that promptly followed them, including more men from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, the First Rhode Island, the Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Seventy-first New York, the latter regiments reaching Annapolis before the Seventh New York and Eighth Massachusetts left, thus keeping the way open. Had the rumored fifteen thousand rebels actually lain between Annapolis and Washington, it would have gone hard with the Government and the fortunes of the Union.

Troops continued to pour into Washington, until it really became an embarrassment to know what to do with them. They "bunked" all over the city, were quartered so far as practicable in the Government buildings, and made the national capital festive with the pranks in which they let off the animal spirits they carried into the grand picnic they seemed to have started on. Among them, a regiment of Zouaves, recruited from the New York Fire Department by Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth, was conspicuous. They were the last of the old-time "toughs," and they made things lively in the capital. They swarmed over the Capitol building, scaling its walls and running about its cornices in true fire-laddie fashion, and once they rendered a distinct service to the city of Washington by saving a burning building adjoining Willard's Hotel, displaying a reckless daring that gave the District firemen some new ideas.

Ellsworth had attracted much attention in 1860 by the admirable work of a company of Chicago Zouaves, with which he had given exhibition drills in the East, and he was early commissioned a second lieutenant in the regular army. But he resigned this position in order to organize the Fire Zouaves, which he marched down Broadway under escort of the Fire Department, and entered upon active service only to sacrifice his life at the very beginning in a needless but tragic manner. As soon as troops arrived in Washington in sufficient numbers, the Government determined to make Washington secure by seizing its outposts. Among these were Arlington Heights, across the Potomac, on the "sacred soil of Virginia," of which this occupation was termed the first "invasion." Ellsworth's regiment occupied the city of Alexandria; and then, discovering a secession flag flying from the Marshall House, the colonel mounted to the roof in person and tore the flag down. Descending, he was met at the foot of the stairs by Jackson, the proprietor of the hotel, who shot him dead with a shot-gun. Ellsworth's death was promptly avenged by Private Francis E. Brownell, who had accompanied him, and who put a bullet through Jackson's head; but, as the first death of an officer, it created wide-spread excitement throughout the North, not excelled by that over the Massachusetts men who fell in Baltimore, and royal honors were shown to his remains. They lay in state in the White House, where he had been a great favorite with the President, and were conveyed to their last resting-place with every military distinction. Perhaps this incident, more than any that had yet occurred, brought home to the people of the North the reality of the war that was upon them. But it only stimulated recruiting; the death of Ellsworth weighing far less with the generous patriotism of the young men who filled up regiment after regiment, than the glory of Ellsworth, and the honor of Private Brownell.

While the levies were coming into Washington, the Southern leaders had not been idle. Response to Jefferson Davis's call for troops was general all over the States, and the week that intervened between Sumter and the riot in Baltimore was a busy one. In Virginia, the Governor took into his own hands measures for the defence of his State. As early as April 15 he caused a number of militia officers to be summoned to Richmond, and he placed in their hands the execution of a movement to capture the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, at the junction of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. Proceeding with a small command through an unfriendly country, these officers, among whom was the afterward famous Confederate general, John D. Imboden, reached their destination in the gray of the early morning of April 18, the day after the Virginia Legislature had passed the ordinance of secession. Instead of the resistance they had looked forward to on information that a Massachusetts regiment was guarding Harper's Ferry, they were welcomed with the sight of buildings in flames, which told them, only too truly, that the United States garrison had abandoned the place on their approach, and had set fire to the arsenal and stores to save them from falling into the hands of the Confederates.

JEFFERSON DAVIS'S RESIDENCE IN RICHMOND.

Early warning of the attempted seizure of Harper's Ferry had been confided to a messenger who had volunteered to acquaint the Government with the impending peril, and word was sent that heavy reinforcements alone would save this property to the United States. But in those formative days, when many earnest men hesitated between loyalty to the Union and loyalty to their State, when officers like Lee abandoned the old service with reluctance under a sense of paramount duty to their State, a man who was loyal one day would conclude overnight to secede with his State. And from some such cause as this, or through fear of the consequences, the messenger never delivered the message to the War Department, and the reinforcements, though anxiously expected, never came. The arsenal had been left in charge of Lieut. Roger Jones, who had been ordered to Harper's Ferry from Carlisle Barracks, Penn., with a small force of forty-five men. Hearing nothing from Washington in response to his request for aid, he made up his mind on the evening of April 17, that the only course open to him was to save his garrison by retreat, and destroy the property thus abandoned. This determination was confirmed by the news brought to him, by a former superintendent of the arsenal, of the coming of the Virginia troops. Although this same man had loyally reported, so long before as January, that an attempt might be made, he now told the workmen engaged at the arsenal that within twenty-four hours the arsenal would be in the hands of the Virginia forces, and advised them to protect the property, cast their lot with the secessionists, and insure to themselves a continuance of work under the new régime.

Lieutenant Jones immediately made secret preparations. He had trains of powder laid through the buildings, and when the force of thirteen hundred Virginians had approached to within a mile of the arsenal, at nine o'clock on the evening of April 17, the torch was applied, and the flames ran through the works, which were quickly burning. Some of the powder trains had been wet by the Southern sympathizers among the workmen, but the result was a practical destruction of nearly all that would have been valuable as munitions of war. The powder that was stored in the buildings exploded from time to time, effectually preventing serious efforts to put out the fire. The garrison was withdrawn across the Potomac and marched back to Carlisle. When the Virginians came up the next morning, they found only the burning arsenal buildings to greet them.

Enough property was rescued from the destruction to make the capture a useful one to the Confederates, however; and the possession of Harper's Ferry gave them command of an important line of communication with Washington, by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Anticipating the use of this line for the transportation of Western troops to Washington, Gen. Kenton Harper, commanding the Virginians, stopped the first train through; but his only capture was the person of Gen. William S. Harney, of the regular army, who was on his way to Washington to resign his commission rather than engage in the civil war. He was made a prisoner and sent to Richmond, whence he was allowed to proceed on his errand. General Harney did not resign, but was presently sent to Missouri to command the Department of the West. But his conciliating method of dealing with the enemy, together with his uncertain loyalty, caused him to be relieved very soon. The strategic value of Harper's Ferry was developed under Col. Thomas J. Jackson (afterward the celebrated "Stonewall"), who was made colonel commandant of all the Virginia forces, superseding all the previously existing militia generals. Robert E. Lee had been given the general command of the State troops, with Jackson as his executive officer, and by a legislative ordinance every militia officer above the grade of captain had been relegated to private life unless reappointed by the governor under the new dispensation.

THE CAPITOL AT RICHMOND.

The bridge at Point of Rocks, a few miles down the Potomac toward Washington, was seized and fortified against a possible attack by General Butler, who was near Baltimore; and by a clever ruse a great number of trains on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad were "bagged," and the cars and engines side-tracked into Strasburg, greatly facilitating the Confederate train service in Virginia. Horses and supplies were secured from the neighboring country, and when Gen. Joseph E. Johnston superseded Jackson a month later at Harper's Ferry, the Confederates were in good shape to confront an advance on their position from Maryland or Pennsylvania, or to send reinforcements, as they did, when the first considerable struggle of the war came at Bull Run, fifty miles south of them.

ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS,
Vice-President C. S. A.

Another destruction of Government property by Government officers, about this time, most unnecessary and unfortunate, deprived the Navy Department of ships and material that would have been incalculably precious, and furnished the Confederates with three ships, one of which, the Merrimac, was to be heard from later in a signal manner.

At the Gosport Navy Yard, opposite Norfolk, Va., there were, besides many munitions of war, no less than eleven fine war ships, a majority of which were armed and ready for sea. The Government made prompt preparations to secure these after the fall of Sumter; and but for the delay of the commandant, Commodore Charles S. McCauley, in executing his orders, a number of the vessels, with stores, armament, and crews, would have been withdrawn into safe waters. But under the influence of his junior officers, most of whom subsequently joined the Confederacy, he deferred action until better prepared. This delay was fatal; for on April 18 he suddenly was confronted by a hostile force, though small in numbers, under General Taliaferro, which had seized Norfolk and threatened the navy yard. The action of the latter in waiting one day for expected reinforcements from Richmond, and Commodore McCauley's promise not to move a vessel or fire a shot except in defence, gave the Union commander time to do what he could to destroy the property in his charge; and on April 20 he scuttled every ship in the harbor, sinking them just before the arrival of Capt. Hiram Paulding in the Pawnee with orders to relieve McCauley, and to save or destroy the property. Seeing that it would be possible for the enemy to raise the sunken vessels, and that after the ships had been rendered useless he could not hold the place with his small force, Paulding decided to complete the work of destruction as far as possible, and told off his men in detachments for this duty. Ships, ship-houses, barracks, wharves, were at the signal (a rocket) set ablaze, and the display was magnificent as pyrotechnics, and discouraging to the enemy, which had expected to secure a ready-made navy for the taking of it. When to the roar of the flames was added the boom of the loaded guns as the fire reached them, the effect was tremendous. Under cover of all this, the Pawnee drew out of the harbor, accompanied by the steam-tug Yankee towing the Cumberland, which alone of the fleet had not been scuttled, and bearing the loyal garrison and crews. In the haste with which the work of destruction had been undertaken, the result was incomplete. The mine under the dry-dock did not explode; and that most useful appliance, together with many shops, cannon, and provisions, was secured by the Confederates, who also succeeded in raising and using three of the sunken and partially burned vessels—the Merrimac, Raritan, and Plymouth, under the guns of the first of which, from behind its armored sides, the Cumberland afterward came to grief in Hampton Roads.

BRIGADIER-GENERAL WILLIAM S. HARNEY.

CHAPTER III.

THE BEGINNING OF BLOODSHED.

LINCOLN'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS—THE STRUGGLE FOR VIRGINIA—OPPOSING VIEWS EXPRESSED BY ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS—THE SLAVE-TRADE OF VIRGINIA—VIRGINIA DRAGOONED—THE FIRST CALL FOR TROOPS—LINCOLN'S FAITH IN THE PEOPLE—ORIGIN OF THE WORD "COPPERHEAD."

Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address was one of the ablest state papers recorded in American history. It argued the question of secession in all its aspects—the constitutional right, the reality of the grievance, the sufficiency of the remedy—and so far as law and logic went, it left the secessionists little or nothing to stand on. But neither law nor logic could change in a single day the pre-determined purpose of a powerful combination, or allay the passions that had been roused by years of resentful debate. Some of its sentences read like maxims for statesmen: "The central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy." "Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws?" "Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?" With all its conciliatory messages it expressed a firm and unalterable purpose to maintain the Union at every hazard. "I consider," he said, "that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it, so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary." And in closing he said: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.... We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Oliver O. Howard. John A. Logan. William B. Hazen. William T. Sherman. Jeff. C. Davis. Henry W. Slocum. J. A. Mower.
SHERMAN AND HIS GENERALS.

No such address had ever come from the lips of a President before. Pierce and Buchanan had scolded the abolitionists like partisans; Lincoln talked to the secessionists like a brother. The loyal people throughout the country received the address with satisfaction. The secessionists bitterly denounced it. Overlooking all its pacific declarations, and keeping out of sight the fact that a majority of the Congress just chosen was politically opposed to the President, they appealed to the Southern people to say whether they would "submit to abolition rule," and whether they were going to look on and "see gallant little South Carolina crushed under the heel of despotism."

GENERAL GRANT'S BODYGUARD.

GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT,
WITH GENERALS RAWLINS AND BOWERS.

In spite of all such appeals, there was still a strong Union sentiment at the South. This sentiment was admirably expressed by Hon. Alexander H. Stephens in a speech delivered on November 14, 1860, in the following words: "This step of secession, once taken, can never be recalled; and all the baleful and withering consequences that must follow will rest on the convention for all time.... What reasons can you give the nations of the earth to justify it? What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied? And what claim founded in justice and right has been withheld? Can either of you to-day name one governmental act of wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the Government of Washington, of which the South has the right to complain? I challenge the answer.... I declare here, as I have often done before, and which has been repeated by the greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots in this and other lands, that it is the best and freest Government—the most equal in its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and the most inspiring in its principles to elevate the race of men—that the sun of heaven ever shone upon. Now, for you to attempt to overthrow such a Government as this, under which we have lived for more than three-quarters of a century, in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety while the elements of peril are around us, with peace and tranquillity accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed—is the height of madness, folly and wickedness, to which I can neither lend my sanction nor my vote." In a speech by Mr. Stephens delivered in Savannah, March 22, 1861, he expressed entirely different views; in expounding the new constitution, he said: "The prevailing idea entertained by him [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution was, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically.... Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea. Its foundation was laid, and its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, in subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition." Seven slave States had gone out, but eight remained, and the anxiety of the secessionists was to secure these at once, or most of them, before the excitement cooled. The great prize was Virginia, both because of her own power and resources, and because her accession to the Confederacy would necessarily bring North Carolina also. Her governor, John Letcher, professed to be a Unionist; but his conduct after the ordinance of secession had been passed appears to prove that this profession was insincere. In electing delegates to a convention to consider the question of secession, the Unionists cast a majority of sixty thousand votes; and on the 4th of April, when President Lincoln had been in office a month, that convention refused, by a vote of eighty-nine to forty-five, to pass an ordinance of secession. The leading revolutionists of the cotton States were becoming uneasy. Said Mr. Gilchrist, of Alabama, to the Confederate Secretary of War: "You must sprinkle blood in the faces of the people! If you delay two months, Alabama stays in the Union!" Hence the attack on Fort Sumter, out of which the garrison were in peril of being driven by starvation. This certainly had a great popular effect in the South as well as in the North; but Virginia's choice appears to have been determined by a measure that was less spectacular and more coldly significant. The Confederate Constitution provided that Congress should have the power to "prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy," and at the time when Virginia's fate was in the balance it was reported that such an act had been passed by the Congress at Montgomery.¹ When Virginia heard this, like the young man in Scripture, she went away sorrowful; for in that line of trade she had great possessions. The cultivation of land by slave labor had long since ceased to be profitable in the border States—or at least it was far less profitable than raising slaves for the cotton States—and the acquisition of new territory in Texas had enormously increased the demand. The greatest part of this business (sometimes estimated as high as one-half) was Virginia's. It was called "the vigintal crop," as the blacks were ready for market and at their highest value about the age of twenty. As it was an ordinary business of bargain and sale, no statistics were kept; but the lowest estimate of the annual value of the trade in the Old Dominion placed it in the tens of millions of dollars. President Dew, of William and Mary College, in his celebrated pamphlet, wrote: "Virginia is, in fact, a negro-raising State for other States." The New York Journal of Commerce of October 12, 1835, contained a letter from a Virginian (vouched for by the editor) in which it was asserted that twenty thousand slaves had been driven south from that State that year. In 1836 the Wheeling (Va.) Times estimated the number of slaves exported from that State during the preceding year at forty thousand, valued at twenty-four million dollars. The Baltimore Register in 1846 said: "Dealing in slaves has become a large business; establishments are made in several places in Maryland and Virginia, at which they are sold like cattle." The Richmond Examiner, before the war, said: "Upon an inside estimate, they [the slaves of Virginia] yield in gross surplus produce, from sales of negroes to go south, ten million dollars." In the United States Senate, just before the war, Hon. Alfred Iverson, of Georgia, replying to Mr. Powell, of Virginia, said Virginia was deeply interested in secession: for if the cotton States seceded, Virginia would find no market for her slaves, without which that State would be ruined.

¹ It is now impossible to prove positively that such a law was actually passed; for the officially printed volume of "Statutes at Large of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America" (Richmond, 1861) was evidently mutilated before being placed in the hands of the compositor. The Acts are numbered, but here and there numbers are missing, and in some of the later Acts there are allusions to previous Acts that cannot be found in the book. It is known that on the 6th of March, 1861, the Judiciary Committee was instructed to inquire into the expediency of such prohibition, and it seems a fair conjecture that one of the missing numbers was an Act of this character. In a later edition (1864) the numbering is made consecutive, but the missing matter is not restored.

THE SIXTH MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT
ATTACKED IN THE STREETS OF BALTIMORE, APRIL 19, 1861.

ON PICKET.
(Showing photographer's outfit.)

After Sumter had been fired on, and the Confederate Congress had forbidden this traffic to outsiders, the Virginia Convention again took up the ordinance of secession (April 17) and passed it in secret session by a vote of eighty-eight to fifty-five. It was not to take effect till approved by the people; but the day fixed for their voting upon it was six weeks distant, the last Thursday in May. Long before that date, Governor Letcher, without waiting for the verdict of the people, turned over the entire military force and equipment of the State to the Confederate authorities, and the seat of the Confederate Government was removed from Montgomery to Richmond. David G. Farragut, afterwards the famous admiral, who was in Norfolk, Virginia, at the time, anxiously watching the course of events, declared that the State "had been dragooned out of the Union," and he refused to be dragooned with her. But Robert E. Lee and other prominent Virginians resigned their commissions in the United States service to enter that of their States or of the Confederacy, and the soil of Virginia was overrun by soldiers from the cotton States. Any other result than a vote for secession was therefore impossible. Arkansas followed with a similar ordinance on the 6th of May, and North Carolina on the 21st, neither being submitted to a popular vote. Kentucky refused to secede. For Tennessee and Missouri there was a prolonged struggle.

When Fort Sumter was surrendered, the Confederates had already acquired possession of Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, Fort Pulaski at Savannah, Fort Morgan at the entrance of Mobile Bay, Forts Jackson and St. Philip below New Orleans, the navy-yard and Forts McRae and Barrancas at Pensacola, the arsenals at Mount Vernon, Ala., and Little Rock, Ark., and the New Orleans Mint. The largest force of United States regulars was that in Texas, under command of Gen. David E. Twiggs, who surrendered it in February, and turned over to the insurgents one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of military property.

On the day when Sumter fell, President Lincoln penned a proclamation, issued the next day (Monday, April 15), which declared "that the laws of the United States have been for some time past, and now are, opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law," and called for militia from the several States of the Union to the number of seventy-five thousand. It also called a special session of Congress, to convene on July 4. He appealed "to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already long enough endured."

With regard to the reception of this celebrated proclamation in the South, Alexander H. Stephens writes as follows, in his History of the war: "The effect of this upon the public mind of the Southern States cannot be described or even estimated. Up to this time, a majority, I think, of even those who favored the policy of secession had done so under the belief and conviction that it was the surest way of securing a redress of grievances, and of bringing the Federal Government back to Constitutional principles. This proclamation dispelled all such hopes. It showed that the party in power intended nothing short of complete centralization. The principles actuating the Washington authorities were those aiming at consolidated power; while the principles controlling the action of the Montgomery authorities were those which enlisted devotion and attachment to the Federative system as established by the Fathers in 1778 and 1787. In short, the cause of the Confederates was States Sovereignty, or the sovereign right of local self-government on the part of the States severally. The cause of their assailants involved the overthrow of this entire fabric, and the erection of a centralized empire in its stead."

The effect of this proclamation in the North has already been referred to. Mr. Lincoln's faith in the people had always been strong; but the response to this proclamation was probably a surprise even to him, as it certainly was to the secessionists, who had assured the Southern people that the Yankees would not fight. The whole North was thrilled with military ardor, and moved almost as one man. The papers were lively with great head-lines and double-leaded editorials; and the local poet filled the spare space—when there was any—with his glowing patriotic effusions. The closing passage of Longfellow's "Building of the Ship," written a dozen years before, beginning:

"Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"

was in constant demand, and was recited effectively by nearly every orator that addressed a war meeting.

Eminent men of all parties and all professions spoke out for the Union. Stephen A. Douglas, who had long been Lincoln's rival, and had opposed the policy of coercion, went to the White House the day before Sumter fell, had a long interview with the President, and promised a hearty support of the Administration, which was immediately telegraphed over the country, and had a powerful effect. Ex-President Pierce (who had made the direful prediction of blood in Northern streets), ex-President Buchanan (who had failed to find any authority for coercion), Gen. Lewis Cass (a Democratic partisan since the war of 1812), Archbishop Hughes (the highest dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church in America), and numerous others, all "came out for the Union," as the phrase went. The greater portion of the Democratic party, which had opposed Lincoln's election, also, as individuals, sustained the Administration in its determination not to permit a division of the country. These were known as "war Democrats," while those that opposed and reviled the Government were called "Copperheads," in allusion to the snake of that name. Some of the bolder ones attempted to take the edge off the sarcasm by cutting the head of Liberty out of a copper cent and wearing it as a scarf-pin; but all they could say was quickly drowned in the general clamor.

Town halls, schoolhouses, academies, and even churches were turned into temporary barracks. Village greens and city squares were occupied every day by platoons of men, most of them not yet uniformed, marching and wheeling and countermarching, and being drilled in the manual of arms by officers that knew just a little more than they did, by virtue of having bought a handbook of tactics the day before, and sat up all night to study it. There was great scarcity of arms. One regiment was looking dubiously at some ancient muskets that had just been placed in their hands, when the colonel came up and with grim humor assured them that he had seen those weapons used in the Mexican War, and more men were killed in front of them than behind them. The boys had great respect for the colonel, but they wanted to be excused from believing his story.

BURNING OF GOSPORT NAVY YARD, NORFOLK, VA., APRIL 21, 1861.

BURNING OF THE UNITED STATES ARSENAL AT HARPER'S FERRY, VA.,
APRIL 18, 1861.

CHAPTER IV.

BORDER STATES AND FOREIGN RELATIONS.

GOVERNORS OF CERTAIN STATES REFUSE TROOPS—THE GOVERNOR OF MISSOURI DISLOYAL—EVENTS IN ST. LOUIS—LOYALTY OF GERMANS—BATTLE AT CARTHAGE—THE STRUGGLE FOR KENTUCKY, MARYLAND AND TENNESSEE—ACTIONS IN WEST VIRGINIA—BATTLE OF RICH MOUNTAIN—BATTLE OF BIG BETHEL—HARPER'S FERRY.

The disposition of the border slave States was one of the most difficult problems with which the Government had to deal. When the President issued his call for seventy-five thousand men, the Governors of Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as those of North Carolina and Virginia, returned positive refusals. The Governor of Missouri answered: "It is illegal, unconstitutional, revolutionary, inhuman, diabolical, and cannot be complied with." The Governor of Kentucky said: "Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States." The Governor of Tennessee: "Tennessee will not furnish a single man for coercion, but fifty thousand, if necessary, for the defence of our rights and those of our brethren." The Governor of North Carolina: "I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country and to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina." The Governor of Virginia: "The militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view." Every one of these governors was a secessionist, with a strong and aggressive party at his back; and yet in each of these States the secessionists were in a minority. It was a serious matter to increase the hostility that beset the National arms on what in another war would have been called neutral ground, and it was also a serious matter to leave the Union element in the northernmost slave States without a powerful support and protection. The problem was worked out differently in each of the States.

A BATTERY ON DRILL.

MAP SHOWING LOYAL AND SECEDING STATES.

At the winter session of the Missouri Legislature an act had been passed that placed the city of St. Louis under the control of police commissioners to be appointed by the Governor, Claiborne F. Jackson. Four of his appointees were secessionists, and three of these were leaders of bodies of "minutemen," half-secret armed organizations. The mayor of the city, who was also one of the commissioners, was known as a "conditional Union man." Other acts showed plainly the bent of the Legislature. One made it treason to speak against the authority of the Governor, and gave him enlarged powers, while another appropriated three million dollars for military purposes, taking the entire school fund for the year, and the accumulations that were to have paid the July interest on the public debt.

RECRUITS TO THE FRONT.

A State convention called to consider the question of secession met in February, and proved to be overwhelmingly in favor of Missouri's remaining in the Union, though it also expressed a general sympathy with slavery, assumed that the South had wrongs, deprecated the employment of military force on either side, and repeated the suggestion that had been made many times in other quarters for a national convention to amend the Constitution so as to satisfy everybody. The State convention made its report in March, and adjourned till December.

This proceeding appeared to be a great disappointment to Governor Jackson; but he failed to take from it any hint to give up his purpose of getting the State out of the Union. On the contrary, he proceeded to try what he could do with the powers at his command. He called an extra session of the Legislature, to convene May 2d, for the purpose of "adopting measures to place the State in a proper attitude of defence," and he called out the militia on the 3d of May, to go into encampment for six days. There was a large store of arms (more than twenty thousand stand) in the St. Louis arsenal; but while he was devising a method and a pretext for seizing them, the greater part of them were suddenly removed, by order from Washington, to Springfield, Illinois. The captain that had them in charge took them on a steamer to Alton, and there called the citizens together by ringing a fire-alarm, told them what he had, and asked their assistance in transferring the cargo to a train for Springfield, as he expected pursuit by a force of secessionists. The many hands that make light work were not wanting, and the train very soon rolled away with its precious freight. The Governor applied to the Confederate Government for assistance, and a quantity of arms and ammunition, including several field-guns, was sent to him in boxes marked "marble." He also ordered a general of the State militia to establish a camp of instruction near the city, and gathered there such volunteer companies as were organized and armed.

CAPTAIN NATHANIEL LYON.
(Afterwards Brigadier-General.)

A VILLAGE COMPANY ON PARADE.

General Scott had anticipated all this by sending reinforcements to the little company that held the arsenal, and with them Capt. Nathaniel Lyon, of the regular army, a man that lacked no element of skill, courage, or patriotism necessary for the crisis. The force was also increased by several regiments of loyal home guards, organized mainly by the exertions of Francis P. Blair, Jr., and mustered into the service of the United States. When the character and purpose of the force that was being concentrated by Jackson became sufficiently evident—from the fact that the streets in the camp were named for prominent Confederate leaders, and other indications—Lyon determined upon prompt and decisive action. This was the more important since the United States arsenal at Liberty had been robbed, and secession troops were being drilled at St. Joseph. With a battalion of regulars and six regiments of the home guard, he marched out in the afternoon of May 10th, surrounded the camp, and trained six pieces of artillery on it, and then demanded an immediate surrender, with no terms but a promise of proper treatment as prisoners of war. The astonished commander, a recreant West Pointer, surrendered promptly; and he and his brigade were disarmed and taken into the city. All the "marble" that had come up from Baton Rouge and been hauled out to the camp only two days before was captured and removed to the arsenal, becoming once more the property of the United States.

The outward march had attracted attention, crowds had gathered along the route, and when Lyon's command were returning with their prisoners they had to pass through a throng of people, among whom were not a few that were striving to create a riot. The outbreak came at length; stones were thrown at the troops and pistol-shots fired into the ranks, when one regiment levelled their muskets and poured a volley or two into the crowd. Three or four soldiers and about twenty citizens were killed in this beginning of the conflict at the West. William T. Sherman (the now famous general), walking out with his little son that afternoon, found himself for the first time under fire, and lay down in a gully while the bullets cut the twigs of the trees above him.

THE BATTLE AT PHILIPPI, JUNE 3, 1861.

GENERAL B. F. KELLEY.

Two days later, Gen. William S. Harney arrived in St. Louis and assumed command of the United States forces. He was a veteran of long experience; but ex-Governor Sterling Price, commanding the State forces, entrapped him into a truce that tied his hands, while it left Jackson and Price practically at liberty to pursue their plans for secession. Thereupon the Government removed him, repudiated the truce, and gave the command to Lyon, now made a brigadier-general. After an interview with Lyon in St. Louis (June 11), in which they found it impossible to deceive or swerve him, Price and Jackson went to the capital, Jefferson City, burning railway bridges behind them, and the Governor immediately issued a proclamation declaring that the State had been invaded by United States forces, and calling out fifty thousand of the militia to repel the invasion. Its closing passage is a fair specimen of many proclamations and appeals that were issued that spring and summer: "Your first allegiance is due to your own State, and you are under no obligation whatever to obey the unconstitutional edicts of the military despotism which has introduced itself at Washington, nor submit to the infamous and degrading sway of its wicked minions in this State. No brave-hearted Missourian will obey the one or submit to the other. Rise, then, and drive out ignominiously the invaders who have dared to desecrate the soil which your labors have made fruitful and which is consecrated by your homes."

A BOMB PROOF.

The very next day Lyon had an expedition in motion, which reached Jefferson City on the 15th, took possession of the place, and raised the National flag over the Capitol. At his approach the Governor fled, carrying with him the great seal of the State. Learning that he was with Price, gathering a force at Booneville, fifty miles farther up Missouri River, Lyon at once reëmbarked the greater part of his command, arrived at Booneville on the morning of the 17th, fought and routed the force there, and captured their guns and supplies. The Governor was now a mere fugitive; and the State convention, assembling again in July, declared the State offices vacant, nullified the secession work of the Legislature, and made Hamilton R. Gamble, a Union man, provisional Governor. Among the citizens whose prompt personal efforts were conspicuous on the Union side were John M. Schofield and Francis P. Blair, Jr. (afterward Generals), B. Gratz Brown (afterward candidate for Vice-President), Rev. Galusha Anderson (afterward President of Chicago University), William McPherson, and Clinton B. Fisk (afterward founder of Fisk University at Nashville).

The puzzling part of the difficulty in Missouri was now over, for the contest was well defined. Most of the people in the northern part of the State, and most of the population of St. Louis (especially the Germans), were loyal to the National Government; but the secessionists were strong in its southern part, where Price succeeded in organizing a considerable force, which was joined by men from Arkansas and Texas, under Gens. Ben. McCulloch and Gideon J. Pillow. Gen. Franz Sigel was sent against them, and at Carthage (July 5) with twelve hundred men encountered five thousand and inflicted a heavy loss upon them, though he was obliged to retreat. His soldierly qualities in this and other actions gave him one of the sudden reputations that were made in the first year of the war, but obscured by the greater events that followed. His hilarious popularity was expressed in the common greeting: "You fights mit Sigel? Den you trinks mit me!" Lyon, marching from Springfield, Mo., defeated McCulloch at Dug Spring, and a week later (August 10) attacked him again at Wilson's Creek, though McCulloch had been heavily reinforced. The national troops, outnumbered three to one, were defeated; and Lyon, who had been twice wounded early in the action, was shot dead while leading a regiment in a desperate charge. Major S. D. Sturgis conducted the retreat, and this ended the campaign. It was found that General Lyon, who was a bachelor, had bequeathed all he possessed (about thirty thousand dollars) to the United States Government, to be used for war purposes.

CARING FOR THE DEAD AND WOUNDED.

BATTLE OF WILSON'S CREEK, NEAR SPRINGFIELD, MO., AUGUST 10, 1861.

In the days when personal leadership was more than it can ever be again, while South Carolina was listening to the teachings of John C. Calhoun, which led her to try the experiment of secession, Kentucky was following Henry Clay, who, though a slaveholder, was a strong Unionist. The practical effect was seen when the crisis came, after he had been in his grave nine years. Governor Beriah Magoffin convened the Legislature in January, 1861, and asked it to organize the militia, buy muskets, and put the State in a condition of armed neutrality; all of which it refused to do. After the fall of Fort Sumter he called the Legislature together again, evidently hoping that the popular excitement would bring them over to his scheme. But the utmost that could be accomplished was the passage of a resolution by the lower house (May 16) declaring that Kentucky should occupy "a position of strict neutrality," and approving his refusal to furnish troops for the national army. Thereupon he issued a proclamation (May 20) in which he "notified and warned all other States, separate or united, especially the United and Confederate States, that I solemnly forbid any movement upon Kentucky soil." But two days later the Legislature repudiated this interpretation of neutrality, and passed a series of acts intended to prevent any scheme of secession that might be formed. It appropriated one million dollars for arms and ammunition, but placed the disbursement of the money and control of the arms in the hands of commissioners that were all Union men. It amended the militia law so as to require the State Guards to take an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, and finally the Senate passed a resolution declaring that "Kentucky will not sever connection with the National Government, nor take up arms with either belligerent party." Lovell H. Rousseau (afterward a gallant general in the national service), speaking in his place in the Senate, said: "The politicians are having their day; the people will yet have theirs. I have an abiding confidence in the right, and I know that this secession movement is all wrong. There is not a single substantial reason for it; our Government had never oppressed us with a feather's weight." The Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge and other prominent citizens took a similar stand; and a new Legislature, chosen in August, presented a Union majority of three to one. As a last resort, Governor Magoffin addressed a letter to President Lincoln, requesting that Kentucky's neutrality be respected and the national forces removed from the State. Mr. Lincoln, in refusing his request, courteously reminded him that the force consisted exclusively of Kentuckians, and told him that he had not met any Kentuckian, except himself and the messengers that brought his letter, who wanted it removed. To strengthen the first argument, Robert Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame, who was a citizen of Kentucky, was made a general and given the command in the State in September. Two months later, a secession convention met at Russellville, in the southern part of the State, organized a provisional government, and sent a full delegation to the Confederate Congress at Richmond, who found no difficulty in being admitted to seats in that body. Being now firmly supported by the new Legislature, the National Government began to arrest prominent Kentuckians who still advocated secession, whereupon others, including ex-Vice-President John C. Breckinridge, fled southward and entered the service of the Confederacy. Kentucky as a State was saved to the Union, but the line of separation was drawn between her citizens, and she contributed to the ranks of both the great contending armies.

MAJOR-GENERAL BENJAMIN F. BUTLER AND STAFF.

Like the governor of Kentucky, Gov. Thomas H. Hicks, of Maryland, had at first protested against the passage of troops, had dreamed of making the State neutral, and had even gone so far as to suggest to the Administration that the British Minister at Washington be asked to mediate between it and the Confederates. But, unlike Governor Magoffin, he ultimately came out in favor of the Union. The Legislature would not adopt an ordinance of secession, nor call a convention for that purpose; but it passed a bill establishing a board of public safety, giving it extraordinary authority over the military powers of the State, and appointed as such board six secessionists and the governor. A tremendous pressure was brought to bear upon the State. One of her poets, in a ringing rhyme to a popular air, told her that the despot's heel was on her shore, and predicted that she would speedily "spurn the Northern scum," while the Vice-President of the Confederacy felt so sure of her acquisition that in a speech (April 30) he triumphantly announced that she "had resolved, to a man, to stand by the South." But Reverdy Johnson and other prominent Marylanders were quite as bold and active for the national cause. A popular Union Convention was held in Baltimore; General Butler with his troops restored the broken communications and held the important centres; and under a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus some of the more violent secessionists were imprisoned. The release of the citizens was demanded by Chief-Justice Taney, of the United States Supreme Court, who declared that the President had no right to suspend the writ; but his demand was refused. In May the Governor called for four regiments of volunteers to fill the requisition of the National Government, but requested that they might be assigned to duty in the State. So Maryland remained in the Union, though a considerable number of her citizens entered the ranks of the Confederate army.

In the mountainous regions of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, where few slaves were held, there was a strong Union element. In other portions of those States there were many enthusiastic secessionists. But in each State there was a majority against disunion. North Carolina voted on the question of calling a convention to consider the subject, and by a small majority decided for "no convention." Tennessee, on a similar vote, showed a majority of fifty thousand against calling a convention. After the fall of Sumter Gov. John W. Ellis, of North Carolina, seized the branch mint at Charlotte and the arsenal at Fayetteville, and called an extra session of the Legislature. This Legislature authorized him to tender the military resources of the State to the Confederate Government, and called a convention to meet May 20th, which passed an ordinance of secession by a unanimous vote. The conservative or Union party of Tennessee issued an address on the 18th of April, in which they declared their approval of the Governor's refusal to furnish troops for the national defence, and condemned both secession and coercion, holding that Tennessee should take an independent attitude. This, with the excitement of the time, was enough for the Legislature. In secret session it authorized Gov. Isham G. Harris, who was a strong secessionist, to enter into a military league with the Confederate Government, which he immediately did. It also passed an ordinance of secession, to be submitted to a popular vote on the 8th of June. Before that day came, the State was in the possession of Confederate soldiers, and a majority of over fifty thousand was obtained for secession. East Tennessee had voted heavily against the ordinance; and a convention held at Greenville, June 17, wherein thirty-one of the eastern counties were represented, declared, for certain plainly specified reasons, that it "did not regard the result of the election as expressive of the will of a majority of the freemen of Tennessee." Later, the people of those counties asked to be separated peaceably from the rest of the State and allowed to remain in the Union; but the Confederate authorities did not recognize the principle of secession from secession, and the people of that region were subjected to a bloody and relentless persecution, before which many of them fled from their homes. The most prominent of the Unionists were Andrew Johnson and the Rev. William G. Brownlow.

COMMISSARY QUARTERS.

CULINARY DEPARTMENT.

That portion of the Old Dominion which lay west of the Alleghany Mountains held in 1860 but one-twelfth as many slaves in proportion to its white population as the remainder of the State. And when Virginia passed her ordinance of secession, all but nine of the fifty-five votes against it were cast by delegates from the mountainous western counties. The people of these counties, having little interest in slavery and its products, and great interests in iron, coal and lumber, the market for which was in the free States, while their streams flowed into the Ohio, naturally objected to being dragged into the Confederacy. Like the people of East Tennessee, they wanted to secede from secession, and one of their delegates actually proposed it in the convention. In less than a month (May 13) after the passage of the ordinance, a Union convention was held at Wheeling, in which twenty-five of the western counties were represented; and ten days later, when the election was held, these people voted against seceding. The State authorities sent recruiting officers over the mountains, but they had little success. Some forces were gathered, under the direction of Gen. Robert E. Lee and under the immediate command of Colonel Porterfield, who began burning the bridges on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Meanwhile Capt. George B. McClellan had been made a general and placed in command of Ohio troops. With four regiments he crossed the Ohio on the 26th and went in pursuit of the enemy. His movement at first was retarded by the burned bridges; but these were repaired, large reinforcements were brought over, and in small but brilliant engagements—at Philippi and at Rich Mountain—he completely routed the Confederates.

At Philippi the Confederates were completely surprised by Colonels Kelley and Dumont, and beat so hasty a retreat that the affair received the local name of the "Philippi races." The victory at Rich Mountain was the first instance of the capture by either side of a military position regularly approached and defended. A pass over this mountain was regarded as so important that all the Confederate troops that could be spared were sent to defend it, under command of Gen. Robert S. Garnett with Colonel Pegram to assist him. The position was so strong that a front attack was avoided, and its speedy capture resulted from a flank attack skilfully planned and successfully executed by Gen. W. S. Rosecrans. On the retreat up the Cheat River Valley General Garnett was killed, and Pegram, with a considerable number of his men, surrendered to McClellan.

The importance of this affair at Rich Mountain was really slight, notwithstanding it was successful in securing to the Union army a footing on this frontier that was not afterward seriously disturbed. But the significance of the action of July 11, and the campaign which it terminated, lies in the instant popularity and prominence it gave to General McClellan. He reported the victory in a Napoleonic despatch, announcing the annihilation of "two armies, commanded by educated and experienced soldiers, intrenched in mountain fastnesses fortified at their leisure;" and concluding, "Our success is complete, and secession is killed in this country." McClellan's failure to accomplish more in this campaign has been indicated by military critics, but at the time nothing obscured the brilliancy of the victory. The people took his own estimate of it, and "Little Mac," the young Napoleon, became a popular hero. The Government also took his view of it; and after the defeat at Bull Run, a few days later, he was given the command of the Army of the Potomac, and in the autumn succeeded to the command of the Armies of the United States.

Delegates from the counties west of the Alleghanies met at Wheeling (June 11), pronounced the acts of the Richmond convention null and void, declared all the State offices vacant, and reorganized the Government, with Francis H. Pierpont as governor. A legislature, consisting of members that had been chosen on the 23d of May, met at Wheeling on the 1st of July, and on the 9th it elected two United States senators. The new State of Kanawha was formally declared created in August. Its constitution was ratified by the people in May, 1862, and in December of that year it was admitted into the Union. But, meanwhile, its original and appropriate name had been exchanged for that of West Virginia.

The victory at Rich Mountain, announced in McClellan's triumphant and resounding words, came in good time to arrest the depression caused by an unfortunate affair of a few weeks before, at Big Bethel, on June 10th; though the popular clamor for aggressive warfare did not cease, but was even now driving the army into a premature advance on Manassas and the battle of Bull Run, for which the preparations were inadequate.


GENERAL BEN McCULLOCH, C. S. A.	GENERAL J. B. MAGRUDER, C. S. A.	GENERAL STERLING PRICE, C. S. A.

BATTLE OF BIG BETHEL, VIRGINIA, JUNE 10, 1861.

Big Bethel has been called the first battle of the war, though it was subsequent to the affair of the "Philippi races," and at a later day would not have been called a battle at all. But among its few casualties there were numbered the deaths of Major Theodore Winthrop and the youthful Lieut. John T. Greble, and the painful impression caused by these losses converted the affair into a tragic national calamity. The movement was a conception of Gen. B. F. Butler's, who commanded at Fortress Monroe. Annoyed by the aggressions of a body of Confederates, under General Magruder, encamped at Little Bethel, eight miles north of Newport News, he sent an expedition to capture them. It consisted of Col. Abram Duryea's Fifth New York Zouaves, with Lieut.-Col. (afterward General) Gouverneur K. Warren second in command (the Confederates greatly feared these "red-legged devils," as they dubbed them), Col. Frederick Townsend's Third New York, Colonel Bendix's Seventh New York Volunteers, the First and Second New York, and detachments from other regiments, with two field-pieces worked by regulars under Lieutenant Greble; Gen. E. W. Pierce in command. Duryea's Zouaves were sent forward to attack from the rear; but a dreadful mistake of identity led Bendix's men to fire into Townsend's regiment, as these commands approached each other, which brought Duryea back to participate in the supposed engagement in his rear, and destroyed the chance of surprising the rebel camp. The Confederates abandoned Little Bethel, and took a strong position at Big Bethel, where they easily repulsed the attack that was made, and pursued the retreating Unionists until checked by the Second New York Regiment.

An important preliminary to the battle of Bull Run was the operations about Harper's Ferry in June and July, resulting, as they did, in the release from that point of a strong Confederate reinforcement, which joined Beauregard at Bull Run at a critical time, and turned the fortunes of the day against the Union army.

Harper's Ferry, as we have seen, had been occupied by a Confederate force under Stonewall Jackson, who became subordinate to the superior rank of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston when that officer arrived on the scene. On both sides a sentimental importance was given to the occupation of Harper's Ferry, which was not warranted by its significance as a military stronghold. It did, indeed, afford a control of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, so long as the position could be maintained. But it derived its importance in the public mind from the fact that it had been chosen by John Brown as the scene of his projected negro uprising in 1859, and was presumed from that to be a natural fortress, a sort of Gibraltar, which, once gained, could be held forever by a small though determined body of men. The Confederate Government and military staff at Richmond so regarded it, and they warned General Johnston that he must realize, in defending it, that its abandonment would be depressing to the cause of the South. General Patterson, whose army gathered in Pennsylvania was to attack it, impressed on the War Department the paramount importance of a victory, and predicted that the first great battle of the war, the results of which would be decisive in the contest, would be fought at Harper's Ferry. He begged for the means of success, and offered his life as the price of a failure on his part. The Washington authorities, though they did not exact the penalty, took him at his word as to the men and means required, and furnished him with between eighteen and twenty-two thousand men (variously estimated), sending him such commanders as Major-General Sandford, of New York (who generously waived his superior rank, and accepted a subordinate position), Fitz John Porter, George Cadwalader, Charles P. Stone, and others. Both sides, then, prepared for action at Harper's Ferry, as for a mighty struggle over an important strategic position.

The Confederates were the first to realize that this was an error. However desirable it might be to hold Harper's Ferry as the key to the Baltimore and Ohio, and to Maryland, General Johnston quickly discovered that, while it was secure enough against an attack in front, across the Potomac, it was an easy capture for a superior force that should cross the river above or below it, and attack it from the Virginia side. For its defence, his force of six thousand five hundred men would not suffice against Patterson's twenty thousand, and he requested permission to withdraw to Winchester, twenty miles to the southwest. This suggestion was most unpalatable to the Confederate authorities, who understood well that the popular interpretation of the movement would be detrimental to the cause. But the fear that McClellan would join Patterson from West Virginia, and that the loss of an army of six thousand five hundred would be even more depressing than a retreat, they reluctantly consented to Johnston's plan. He destroyed everything at Harper's Ferry that could be destroyed, on June 13th and 14th; and when Patterson, after repeated promptings from Washington, arrived there on the 15th, he found no determined enemy and no mighty battle awaiting him, but only the barren victory of an unopposed occupation of a ruined and deserted camp.

A RAILROAD BATTERY.

CHAPTER V.

ARMY ORGANIZATION NORTH AND SOUTH.

CONFEDERATE ADVANTAGES—THE LEADING GENERAL OFFICERS—GRADUATES OF WEST POINT JOIN THE CONFEDERACY—CAPITAL REMOVED FROM MONTGOMERY—PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S CALL FOR SOLDIERS AND SAILORS—SOUTHERN PRIVATEERS—"ON TO RICHMOND!"

Although up to this time no important engagements between the troops had taken place, the war was actually begun. The Sumter affair had been the signal for both sides to throw away subterfuge and disguise, and it became thenceforth an open struggle for military advantage. The South no longer pleaded State rights, but military necessity, for seizing such Government posts and property as were within reach; the North no longer acted under the restraint of hesitation to commit an open breach, for the peace was broken irrevocably, and whatever it was possible to do, in the way of defence or offence, was now become politic.

The two contending powers were entering on the struggle under very different conditions and with unequal advantages. Before taking up the military operations which ensued, it will be interesting to look at these conditions.

On both sides there were many experienced army and navy officers, who had seen service, had been educated at the United States Military and Naval Academies, and had either remained in the service or, having withdrawn to civil life, were prompt to offer their swords to the side to which they adhered. Assuming the number and quality of these officers to have been equally divided, there were several respects in which the Confederates had the advantage in their preliminary organization, apart from the studied care with which disloyal cabinet officers had scattered the Federal regular army and had stripped Northern posts of supplies and of trustworthy commandants. President Lincoln came on from his Western home without knowledge of war, acquaintance with military men, or familiarity with military matters, and was immediately plunged into emergencies requiring in the Executive an intimate knowledge of all three. He became the titular commander-in-chief of an army already officered, but not only ignorant as to whether he had the right man in the right place, but powerless to make changes even had he known what changes to make, by reason of the law and the traditions governing the personnel of the service, in which promotion and personal relations were fixed and established. He found a military establishment that had been running on a peace footing for more than a decade and was not readily adaptable to war conditions; and officers in high command, who, as their States seceded, followed them out of the Union, carrying with them the latest official secrets and leaving behind them vacancies which red-tape and tradition, and not the free choice of the commander-in-chief, were to fill. His near advisers, particularly those in whose hands were the details of military administration, were scarcely better informed than himself, possessing political shrewdness and undoubted loyalty, but none of the professional knowledge of which he stood so sorely in need.

The President of the Southern Confederacy, on the other hand, was Jefferson Davis, a man whose personal instrumentality in bringing about the rebellion gave him both knowledge and authority; an educated soldier and veteran of the Mexican war, in which he held a high command; familiar, through long service as Secretary of War and on the Senate Military Committee, not only with all the details of military administration, but with the points of strength and weakness in the military establishment of the enemy he was about to grapple with. Placed at the head of a new government, with neither army nor navy, nor law nor tradition for their control, he was free to exercise his superior knowledge of military matters for the best possible use of the men at his command in organizing his military establishment. None of the political conditions surrounding him forced on President Davis the appointment of political generals—an unavoidable evil which long postponed the effectiveness of President Lincoln's army administration. Whatever his judgment, guided by his professional military experience, approved of, he was free to do. It was President Lincoln's difficult task to learn something about military matters himself, and then to untie or cut the Gordian knot of hampering conditions; and if, in doing this, an occasional injustice was done to an individual officer, it is a cause for wonder far less significant than that by the exercise of his extraordinary faculty of common-sense he progressed as rapidly as he did toward the right way of accomplishing the ends he had in view.

FRANCIS H. PIERPONT,
Governor of West Virginia.

CAMP OF THE FORTY-FOURTH NEW YORK INFANTRY, NEAR ALEXANDRIA, VA.

The beginning of trouble in 1861 found the administration of the War Department in the hands of Secretary Joseph Holt, who had succeeded the secessionist Floyd, and was in turn succeeded by Simon Cameron, the war secretary of Lincoln's first cabinet, who remained there until the appointment of Edwin M. Stanton, the great "war secretary" of the remaining years of the struggle. Cameron was a shrewd politician, but was uninformed on military matters, for advice on which President Lincoln relied principally on other members of the cabinet and on General Scott. The cabinet of 1861 contained also John A. Dix, in the Treasury—whence issued his celebrated "shoot him on the spot" despatch—who took a general's commission when he retired in favor of Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury during most of the war. Gideon Welles was Secretary of the Navy.

Among the staff officers of the army were Lorenzo Thomas, Adjutant-General; E. D. Townsend, who as Assistant Adjutant-General was identified with this important office throughout the war; Montgomery C. Meigs, Quartermaster-General; and Joseph G. Totten, Chief of Engineers.

The general in command of the army was Winfield Scott, whose conduct of the Mexican war had made him a conspicuous military and political figure, an able officer and a most loyal Unionist, but already suffering from the infirmities of age, which soon compelled him to relinquish to younger hands the command of the army. But until after the battle of Bull Run, his was the directing mind. His immediate subordinates were Brig.-Gens. John E. Wool, also a veteran in service; William S. Harney, whose reluctance to take part in civil war soon terminated his usefulness; and David E. Twiggs, who surrendered his command to the Confederates in Texas, and going with the South, was replaced by Edwin V. Sumner.

The command of the main Union force, organized from the volunteers who were pouring into Washington, devolved on Irvin McDowell, a major in the regular army, now promoted to be brigadier-general, who established his headquarters at Alexandria, across the Potomac from Washington, there directing the defence of the capital, and thence advancing to Bull Run. In this command he succeeded Gen. Joseph K. F. Mansfield. Under him, during this campaign, were many officers who rose to eminence during the war. His corps commanders at Bull Run were Gens. Daniel Tyler, David Hunter, Samuel P. Heintzelman, Theodore Runyon, and D. S. Miles; and among the brigade commanders were Gens. Erasmus D. Keyes, Robert C. Schenck, William T. Sherman, Israel B. Richardson, Andrew Porter, Ambrose E. Burnside, William B. Franklin, Oliver O. Howard, Louis Blenker, and Thomas A. Davies. Threatening the approach to Richmond from the lower Chesapeake, was Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, at Fortress Monroe.

Campfire and Battlefield / An Illustrated History of the Campaigns and Conflicts of the Great Civil War

CAMPFIRE AND BATTLEFIELD

CAMPAIGNS AND CONFLICTS

GREAT CIVIL WAR

ROSSITER JOHNSON
JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL.D.
GEN. J. T. MORGAN
GEN. O. O. HOWARD
GEN. SELDEN CONNOR
HENRY W. B. HOWARD
GEN. JOHN B. GORDON

FRANK BEARD
GEORGE SPIEL

BRYAN, TAYLOR & COMPANY,

CONTENTS

OTHER ARTICLES