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42

MODERATION AND CAUTION

and the need of enforcing it. It is this which gives so grandly conservative a character to the late war on the Federal side. It has been simply an effort to suppress combinations against the law. The tipstaff, or at best the policeman, ought to have been sufficient for the purpose; it is only because they are not that the President now calls out 75,000 militiamen, and will call into the field army after army, until at last enough has been done "to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed." From this deep abiding sense of the lawfulness of his position, flows that studious moderation, that seemingly impassive dryness of tone, which marks all Mr. Lincoln's state papers, as compared with the subtle yet tumid rhetoric, the heated appeals to the feelings and passions of the South, which characterise those of Mr. Davis. Mr. Lincoln is simply fulfilling a duty himself, in calling upon others to fulfil theirs. That bears no rhetoric; that appeals to no passion.

Observe again for the second time the pre

OF THE PRESIDENT.

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scient caution which qualifies the pledge to avoid devastation, destruction, or interference with property. The day is not very far off when it may become impossible, consistently with the object of suppressing "said combinations," and causing "the laws to be duly executed," not to interfere with, not to impair, not, finally, to destroy the most precious property in the South, that in human flesh. But in doing this, as well as in sanctioning (how reluctantly always is well known) other acts of devastation and destruction which military expediency may seem to command, the President will violate no pledge, he will but yield to what he deems a necessity. If thus only and not otherwise can illegal combinations be put down, and the execution of the laws be restored, he will be but carrying out by different means the object of this his first proclamation.

The great American civil war, then, has begun. The South has flung down the gauntlet; the North, by its chosen President, has taken

it up.

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MORE SECESSIONS.

CHAPTER II.

FROM THE OPENING OF THE CIVIL WAR TO THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION OF JANUARY 1, 1863.

WHEN Congress met in Extraordinary Session on July 4, 1861, four more States had seceded―Virginia (April 25), Arkansas (May 6), North Carolina (May 20), and Tennessee (June 8); the secession being, however, if I am not mistaken, in no single instance submitted to the vote of the people, whilst the Governors of the Border States of Kentucky and Missouri were attempting to take up a position of neutrality, and Secession movements in Maryland had had to be suppressed, chiefly through the somewhat high-handed energy of General Butler. The Confederate capital had been established at Richmond, as if to bid defiance by its proximity to Washington.

General Lee - the

FIGHTING IN VIRGINIA.

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favourite Aide-de-Camp of the old Federal Commander-in-Chief, General Scott-had been appointed to the chief command of the military and naval forces of Virginia. The National Armoury at Harper's Ferry and the Navy Yard at Gosport had been burned to prevent their falling into Secessionist hands. The seizure of national property in the South and South-West had gone on. Various Federal garrisons had been compelled to surrender. Internal war had broken out in Missouri, in Tennessee, from which latter State the only loyal Southern senator, Andrew Johnson, had made his way through difficulties and dangers of all sorts to Washington. In Virginia the Federals had occupied Arlington Heights, on the Virginian side of the Potomac, and various movements and skirmishes had taken place on the border, including a somewhat disastrous one (to the Federals) at Big Bethel (June 10). On the other hand, the North had responded enthusiastically to the call for men, and forty Western counties of Virginia had refused to follow the

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PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S

remainder of the State into secession, and had organised themselves into a new loyal State, under the name of "Western Virginia."

The President in his Message, after a brief summary of the proceedings of the Secessionists to the bombardment of Fort Sumter, pointed out that this act was in no sense a matter of self-defence upon the part of the assailants :

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They knew-they were expressly notified -that the giving of bread to the few brave and hungry men of the garrison was all which would on that occasion be attempted, unless themselves, by resisting so much, should provoke more. They knew that their Government desired to keep the garrison in the fort, not to assail them, but to maintain visible possession, and thus to preserve the Union from actual and immediate dissolution-trusting, as hereinbefore stated, to time, discussion, and the ballot-box for final adjustment; and they assailed and reduced the fort for precisely the reverse object

-to drive out the visible authority of the Federal Union, and thus force it to imme

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