The Tweddle Hall Convention at Albany, 1861 XXVI. The Union versus the Confederacy. .407 Organization of the Confederacy-Jefferson Da- XXVII. The Pause before the Shock......428 XXVIII. Siege and Reduction of Ft. Sumter 440 Hesitation-Futile Negotiations-Attempt to XXIX. The Nation called to arms-and Virginia sends Envoys to Washington-The XXX. Secession resumes its march......473 XXXI. The Opposing Forces in conflict...497 PAGE XXXII. West Virginia clings to the Union 516 Convention called-State organization effected -McClellan advances-Fight at Rich Mountain-Rebel rout at Carrick's Ford-Union Repulse at Scarytown-Surprise at Cross LanesCarnifex Ferry-Guyandotte-Romney-Alleghany Summit-Huntersville. XXXIII. The War in Old Virginia........528 Ft. Monroe-Great Bethel-Alexandria oceu- XXXIV. First session of the 37th Congress 553 Organization of the House-Mr. Lincoln's first XXXV. Rebellion and War in Missouri.572 XXXVI. War on the Seaboard and Ocean, 597 The Privateer Savannah-The Petrel-Fort XXXVII. Kentucky adheres to the Union.608 XXXVIII. The Potomac-Ball's Bluff......617 Scott a failure-Gen. McClellan called to Appended Notes..... .....631 I. The Synod of Kentucky and Slavery. II. New School Presbyterians condemn the institution. III. The Albany Evening Journal on Gov. Seward and Judge Campbell. IV. Jere. Clemens on Alabama secession-the Rebels feared delay. V. The confidence of the Rebels -Russell on the capture of Washington. VI. The North Carolina Convention-an error corrected. ANALYTICAL INDEX........... ..633 BULL RUN BATTLE-FIELD AND CENTERVILLE BATTLE-FIELD OF WILSON'S CREEK, NEAR SPRingfield, Mo. SINKING OF THE PETREL BY THE ST. LAWRENCE FORT PICKENS-SANTA ROSA ISLAND-PENSACOLA. HILTON HEAD-REDUCTION OF FORT BEAUREGARD THE AMERICAN CONFLICT. I. OUR COUNTRY. THE United States of America, whose independence, won on the battle-fields of the Revolution, was tardily and reluctantly conceded by Great Britain on the 30th of November, 1782, contained at that time a population of a little less than Three Millions, of whom half a million were slaves. This population was mainly settled upon and around the bays, harbors, and inlets, which irregularly indent the western shore of the Atlantic Ocean, for a distance of about a thousand miles, from the mouth of the Penobscot to that of the Altamaha. The extent of the settlements inland from the coast may have averaged a hundred miles, although there were many points at which the primitive forest still looked off upon the broad expanse of the ocean. Nominally, and as distinguished from those of other civilized nations, the territories of the Confederation stretched westward to the Mississippi, and northward, as now, to the Great Lakes, giving a total area of a little more than eight hundred thousand square miles. At several inviting localities, the "clearings" were push ed two or three hundred miles westward, to the bases and more fertile valleys of the eastern slope of the Alleghanies; and there were three or four settlements quite beyond that formidable but not impassable barrier, mainly in that portion of Virginia which is now the State of Kentucky. But, in the absence of steam, of canals, and even of tolerable highways, and with the mouth of the Mississippi held and sealed by a jealous and not very friendly foreign power, the fertile valleys of the Illinois, the Wabash, and even of the Ohio itself, were scarcely habitable for civilized communities. No staple that their pioneer population would be likely, for many years, to produce, could be sold on the sea-board for the cost of its transportation, even from the site whereon Cincinnati has since been founded and built, much less from that of Indianapolis or Chicago. The delicate, costly fabrics of Europe, and even of Asia, could be transferred to the newest and most inland settlement for a small fraction of the price at which they would there be eagerly bought; but when the few coins which the settlers had taken | ed, desolating Revolutionary strugwith them in their journey of emi-gle, rich, indeed, in hope, but poor in gration had been exhausted, there was nothing left wherewith to pay for these costly luxuries; and debt, embarrassment, bankruptcy, were the inevitable results. A people clothed in skins, living on the products of the chase and the spontaneous abundance of nature, might maintain existence and a rude social organization amid the forests and on the prairies of the Great Valley; any other must have experienced striking alternations of factitious prosperity and universal distress; seeing its villages and commercial depots rise, flourish, and decay, after the manner of Jonah's gourd, and its rural population constantly hunted by debt and disaster to new and still newer locations, The Great West of to-day owes its unequaled growth and progress, its population, productiveness, and wealth, primarily, to the framers of the Federal Constitution, by which its development was rendered possible; but more immediately and palpably to the sagacity and statesmanship of Jefferson, the purchaser of Louisiana; to the genius of Fitch and Fulton, the projector and achiever, respectively, of steam-navigation; to De Witt Clinton, the early, unswerving, and successful champion of artificial inland navigation; and to Henry Clay, the eminent, eloquent, and effective champion of the diversification of our National Industry through the Protection of Home Manufactures. The difficulties which surrounded the infancy and impeded the growth of the thirteen original or Atlantic States, were less formidable, but kindred, and not less real. Our fathers emerged from their arduous, protract worldly goods. Their country had, |