THE STAR OF THE WEST.

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and made it apparent that that sympathy still existed. This served to strengthen the feeling in the South, to which reference has been made, that the North would present a divided front in case of actual war.

At the time that the Senate was discussing the resolutions offered by Mr. Crittenden, the Legislature of Virginia was giving thought to the plans for conciliation, and on the sixteenth of January adopted resolutions proposing a "peace conference," to be composed of a representative from each State, which should. attempt to adjust the controversies. Representatives of thirteen free States met at Washington, on the fourth of February, and continued in session three weeks, at the end of which time they presented to Congress a series of proposed amendments to the Constitution. Ex-President Tyler was chairman of this Convention. The proceedings were brought before the House March 1st, 1861, but not acted upon. The Senate refused to accept the proposition of the peace conference instead of the project of Mr. Crittenden, and finally rejected Mr. Crittenden's plan. Thus the efforts for peace ended, for while the discussions were in progress in the North, the Star of the West* had been fired upon at Charleston, and Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina had taken possession of forts and arsenals belonging to the United States. Other public property was promptly seized. In Louis

The Star of the West was a steamer sent with fifty recruits and supplies to Major Anderson at Fort Sumter. It left New York on the night of January 5th, 1861, and reached Charleston Harbor on the ninth. It was fired at from sand batteries at the entrance of the harbor, and was struck once or twice, and being a merchant vessel, it was unable to return the fire. It was forced to put to sea without effecting its mission.

iana, Missouri, Florida and Texas, siezures were made before the inauguration of the new President, and a Southern historian states that over a hundred thousand muskets and rifles had previously been transferred from Springfield, Mass., to various arsenals in the South, in anticipation of the war, the value of the property thus obtained being some thirty million of dollars.*

Abraham Lincoln, the new President, was a "man of the people," who had been born of humble parents, in Kentucky, in 1805, and after having served in the Black Hawk War, in 1832, had become interested in State politics. He was elected a member of the Illinois Legislature in 1834. Admitted to the practice of law, he established himself in Springfield, and soon became a man of note. In 1846, he was chosen a member of the House of Representatives, and there, in May, of the same year, made a speech to which we have already referred, against the Mexican war policy of President Polk, in support of his "Spot Resolutions," as they were called. After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, he delivered a powerful oration against Stephen A. Douglas, which carried his

See also McPherson's "History of the Rebellion," p. 84, and quotations from it, in J. M. Botts's "The Great Rebellion," p. 121.

+ See page 456.

Stephen Arnold Douglas was born at Brandon, Vt., in 1813, and removed to Illinois in 1833, where he began to practice law at Jacksonville. Soon becoming an active Democratic politician, he was elected to Congress in 1843, where he advocated the admission of Texas. From 1847 to his death, he was Senator from Illinois. He supported Clay's compromise measures in 1850. He was the reputed author of the doctrine of popular sovereignty, or the right of each terri tory to decide for or against slavery. In 1854, he reported the KansasNebraska Bill. He was a rival of Buchanan, in the Democratic con

LINCOLN ELECTED.

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audience by storm, and pointed to him as the natural person to oppose the "Little Giant." In 1858, the two became candidates for the United States Senatorship, and a remarkable contest ensued, in the course of which Lincoln and Douglas spoke in various places in Illinois in advocacy of their respective claims. In the opening speech of this campaign, delivered at Springfield, June 17, 1858, Lincoln, who had been known as a conservative Whig, uttered the now memorable words, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect that it will cease to be divided." Douglas became Senator, but Mr. Lincoln gained the greater popular vote. When he was made the candidate of the Republican party for President, in 1860, few people in the country knew him, and many felt that the nomination was a weak one, but his speeches after his election proved him to be a sagacious and thoughtful man who could bring a subject before the popular mind in a manner so perspicacious and original as to fix it in the memory of his hearers. His character is best indicated by his own words, uttered March 4, 1865, in his second inaugural address-"with malice. toward none, with charity for all." He entered office declaring his intention not to irritate any portion of the country, but to strive to carry out all the laws of the land in strict impartiality. He indicated that his vention of 1856, and became his bitter enemy, opposing the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution. In 1860 he was again candidate for the Democratic nomination for President, and was nominated at Charleston. Upon the breaking out of war, he supported the government. He died in 1861.

policy would be simply to hold or re-take the forts and other property of the United States, that might be threatened or occupied by any forces not under Federal authority, and he advised the people to keep their self-possession, assuring them that as other clouds had cleared away, so that one would which then threatened the land. "Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this land," he asserted in language which reminds us of the utterances of Washington, "are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulties." Mr. Lincoln evidently intended to pursue a “peace policy," and not to interfere with slavery.*

The policy of the Confederates was indicated by Mr. Davis in several of his speeches in such words as the following: "If they attempt invasion by land, we must take the war out of our territory. If war must come, it must be upon Northern and not upon Southern soil." "We will carry war where it is easy to advance; where food for the sword and torch await our armies in the densely populated cities; and though they may come and spoil our crops, we can raise them as before, while they cannot rear the cities which took years of industry and millions of money to build." Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President, stated the principles of the Confederate Government in a speech delivered at Savannah, in March, 1860, in which he

*In August, 1862, when a great pressure was brought to bear upon Mr. Lincoln to lead him to confiscate slaves and declare emancipation, he wrote: "My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery." "What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union."

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used these words: "Its foundations are laid, its corner stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition." "The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system." "This stone,

which was rejected by the first builders, 'is become the chief stone of the corner' in our new edifice." While the leaders were thus hurrying the South on towards war, the Southern people were, as Mr. Pollard says in his history, anxious for peace, and deplored war between the two sections, as "a policy detrimental to the civilized world."

Actual war was brought on by an attack upon Fort