we will fight you." Still, nobody ventured to utter the word "treason." With the conclusion of the trial of Aaron Burr, treason seems to have been practically blotted out of the statutes of the United States.

The inauguration of Mr. Lincoln produced no immediately apparent change in the bearing of the Administration towards the South, but the views of the new President were very carefully expressed on the great questions towards which all thoughts were directed. He said: "To the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the United States be faithfully executed in all the States. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the Government, and collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.'

This was the modest programme of the new President, and it did not look very belligerent. To the Secessionists he said: "In your hands, my dissatisfied 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 shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.' I am loath to close. 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 chords 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."

Though these words were pacific, and held out the olive branch to the South, yet they fully covered the

1861.]

DEPENDENCE UPON THE MILITIA.

23

situation, and the conviction was general that Mr. Lincoln would live up to his solemn pledge, and at the proper time would act with decision and boldness. Although it might have been said that the South had already committed numerous acts of war against the Federal Government, yet each side wished to leave to the other the fearful responsibility of firing the first gun, if war must come.

As time went on, and the Federal Government adhered to its inoffensive policy, the leaders of Secession became apprehensive that the way to reconciliation might be opened or that the Secession ardor might abate, and they, therefore, resolved to put an impassable barrier between North and South. To this end, on the morning of the twelfth of April, they opened fire on Fort Sumter, and the gauge of battle could no longer be disregarded by Mr. Lincoln. The last hope of a peaceful solution expired with the reverberations of the first cannon that sent its shot against the walls of Sumter, and aroused the nation at last to a partial consciousness of the imminence of the danger which threatened it.

Our fathers regarded the militia of the several States as the true source of military strength in such a Government as ours, and the Constitution makes provision for calling out these citizen soldiers for service under the Federal authority. It was feared, however, that the "cankers of a calm world and long peace " had left our militia organizations in anything but an efficient condition. Nevertheless, they had to be depended upon in this great emergency, and, perhaps, the result afforded the highest evidence of the wisdom and foresight of the fathers of the Constitution, in thus placing in the hands of these patriotic and voluntary organizations the ark of the Federal Constitution. At all events, they did not disappoint any reasonable hopes reposed in them, from the opening to the end of the rebellion.

[Some reader who thinks it witty or popular to laugh at the militia, (always excepting the New York Seventh and a half-dozen other crack regiments, here and there) is expected to turn up his nose at this general commendation, and ask: "How about the first Bull Run ?" We answer unhesitatingly, that veterans have seldom fought better under like conditions than our militia did on the 21st day of July, 1861, at Bull Run. In proof of this, we propose to present, by and by, some facts for the consideration of the reader.]

Under the authority thus conferred, Mr. Lincoln, on the fifteenth day of April, issued his proclamation, setting forth that certain States were engaged in obstructing the laws of the United States, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, and that he therefore called for the militia of the several States, to the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand men.

The Bay State displayed most alacrity in responding to this call, and on the day following the promulgation of the proclamation, the 6th Massachusetts regiment, completely equipped, left Boston for the National Capital. Baltimore lay like a dragon across their line of march, and while passing through that city, the regiment was attacked by a furious mob of rebel sympathizers, and several of its men were killed or severely wounded.

Following this event, the railroad bridges over Gunpowder, Bush and Canton Rivers, between Baltimore and Havre de Grace, were burned, and the Government was obliged to find other routes for transporting troops and war material, from the east and north to the Capital.

Now, however, inflamed nearly as much by the brutal and unprovoked assault on the 6th Massachusetts, as by the attack on Fort Sumter, prodigious energy was displayed in the forwarding of troops, and in a few days the Administration felt that all danger of

1861.]

PARTY LINES OBLITERATED.

25

its expulsion from the Capital was over, and that the nucleus of an army was encamped around the city.

Considering the fact that the Rebellion was quasipolitical, the uprising of the masses of the people of the loyal States, irrespective of party, was something wonderful in the history of revolutionary movements. The southern leaders supposed that the ties of party would bind to their cause a considerable body of men in every State, and that if they did not act with them, they would at least openly sympathize with them. And they believed that this course would seriously hamper and embarrass the administration; but instead of this, political ties with the rebel South were snapped asunder without a moment's hesitation, and Democrat and Republican stood shoulder to shoulder in support of the Government.

The country had just passed through an unusually heated and exciting political canvass, and it was the purpose of the secessionists to strike the blow for dissolution before the blood, warmed up in the political contest, had resumed its cool and wonted flow. But its effect upon their political allies was the reverse of what they looked for, and really, of what they had reason to expect. No other age or country has ever presented the exact parallel of such an inflexible line of demarkation as between the rebel and loyal States. True, the people of the so-called border States were divided on the question; but passing these, either way, there were no contending factions; practically, on the southerly side all the whites were rebels, and on the northerly side all were loyal.

The impression that prevailed so generally at the North, in the early days of the war, that a large proportion of the whites in the Southern States were opposed to secession and wanted to see the Union preserved, was a baseless delusion. There may have been many, who like A. H. Stephens, were averse to a separation, but

when the deed was done, they, like him, gave their whole souls to the cause. Exceptions here and there, like the case of John Minor Botts on the rebel side, and Vallandingham on the Union side, were striking chiefly because of the rarity of such instances.

It required a few months to effectually dispel another Northern delusion, in which the "hope was father to the thought." We could reason upon the fall of Sumter without necessarily plunging the country into war, and we tried hard to believe that when the South saw the government arm for the strife, it would find some way by which diplomacy might avert the impending conflict, and restore the revolted States to their allegiance to the Government. But Bull-Run extinguished this fond hope, and as the news of that untoward battle sped over the country, the Administration and the people saw the struggle was inevitable and that it would assume herculean proportions, and it and they prepared to meet it.

The revolted States embraced an area of 783,144 square miles, with a white population of 5,672,272 and 3,279,320 slaves. The slaves, who were counted upon in the beginning, by our Northern people, as an element of weakness to the South, really constituted one of the rebels' most useful factors in carrying on the war. Their fidelity to their masters, under all the circumstances, was most extraordinary, and enabled the white population to send all its able-bodied men into the field, while the industry of the negroes provided for the wants of the non-combatants, and very largely also for the Confederate armies. Moreover, the negroes were employed by the Confederates in various quasi-military occupations in the commissary, quartermaster's and ordnance departments, whereby an equal number of whites were relegated to the ranks.

This condition of things enabled the Confederates, with a white population greatly inferior to that of the loyal States, to rally around their standards during the