slave states. It was not enough for them that slavery could keep on where
it was. To spread it where it was not, had been their aim for a very long
while. The next day, March 5th, Lincoln had letters from Fort Sumter, in
Charleston harbor. Major Anderson was besieged there by the batteries of
secession, was being starved out, might hold on a month longer, needed
help. Through staggering complications and embarrassments, which were
presently to be outstaggered by worse ones, Lincoln by the end of March
saw his path clear. "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen,
and not mine, is the momentous issue of civil war." The clew to the path
had been in those words from the first. The flag of the Union, the little
island of loyalty amid the waters of secession, was covered by the
Charleston batteries. "Batteries ready to open Wednesday or Thursday.
What instructions?" Thus, on April 1st, General Beauregard, at
Charleston, telegraphed to Jefferson Davis. They had all been hoping that
Lincoln would give Fort Sumter to them and so save their having to take
it. Not at all. The President of the United States was not going to give
away property of the United States. Instead, the Governor of South Caro-
lina received a polite message that an attempt would be made to supply
Fort Sumter with food only, and that if this were not interfered with, no
arms or ammunition should be sent there without further notice, or in
case the fort were attacked. Lincoln was leaning backwards, you might
say, in his patient effort to conciliate. And accordingly our transports
sailed from New York for Charleston with instructions to supply Sumter
with food alone, unless they should be opposed in attempting to carry out
their errand. This did not suit Jefferson Davis at all; and, to cut it
short, at half-past four, on the morning of April 12, 1861, there arose
into the air from the mortar battery near old Fort Johnson, on the south
side of the harbor, a bomb-shell, which curved high and slow through the
dawn, and fell upon Fort Sumter, thus starting four years of civil war.
One week later the Union proclaimed a blockade on the ports of Slave