The insurrection which is yet existing in the United States and
aims at the overthrow of the Federal Constitution and the Union was
clandestinely prepared during the winter of 1860 and 1861, and assumed
an open organization in the form of a treasonable provisional government
at Montgomery, in Alabama, on the 18th day of February, 1861. On the
12th day of April, 1861, the insurgents committed the flagrant act of
civil war by the bombardment and capture of Fort Sumter, which cut off
the hope of immediate conciliation. Immediately afterwards all the roads
and avenues to this city were obstructed, and the capital was put into
the condition of a siege. The mails in every direction were stopped, and
the lines of telegraph cut off by the insurgents, and military and naval
forces which had been called out by the Government for the defense of
Washington were prevented from reaching the city by organized and
combined treasonable resistance in the State of Maryland. There was no
adequate and effective organization for the public defense. Congress had
indefinitely adjourned. There was no time to convene them. It became
necessary for me to choose whether, using only the existing means,
agencies, and processes which Congress had provided, I should let the
Government fall at once into ruin or whether, availing myself of the
broader powers conferred by the Constitution in cases of insurrection,
I would make an effort to save it, with all its blessings, for the
present age and for posterity.

I thereupon summoned my constitutional advisers, the heads of all the
Departments, to meet on Sunday, the 20th day of April, 1861, at the
office of the Navy Department, and then and there, with their unanimous
concurrence, I directed that an armed revenue cutter should proceed to
sea to afford protection to the commercial marine, and especially the
California treasure ships then on their way to this coast. I also