[Sidenote:  Lincoln’s inaugural address, March 4, 1861.]

380.  Lincoln’s Inauguration.—­On March 4, 1861, President Lincoln made his first inaugural address.  In it he declared:  “The Union is much older than the Constitution....  No state upon its own motion can lawfully get out of the Union....  In view of the Constitution and the laws the Union is unbroken ...  I shall take care that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the states.”  As to slavery, he had “no purpose ... to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists.”  He even saw no objection to adopt an amendment of the Constitution to prohibit the Federal government from interfering with slavery in the states.  But he was resolved to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

[Illustration:  SLAVERY AND SECESSION.]

[Illustration:  “OLD GLORY” AS USED IN THE CIVIL WAR.]

[Sidenote:  Fort Sumter. Source-Book, 299-302.]

[Sidenote:  The call to arms, April 15, 1861.]

381.  Fall of Fort Sumter, April, 1861.—­The strength of Lincoln’s resolve was soon tested.  When South Carolina seceded, Major Anderson, commanding the United States forces at Charleston, withdrew from the land forts to Fort Sumter, built on a shoal in the harbor.  He had with him only eighty fighting men and was sorely in need of food and ammunition.  Buchanan sent a steamer, the Star of the West, to Charleston with supplies and soldiers.  But the Confederates fired on her, and she steamed away without landing the soldiers or the supplies.  Lincoln waited a month, hoping that the secessionists would come back to the Union of their own accord.  Then he decided to send supplies to Major Anderson and told the governor of South Carolina of his decision.  Immediately (April 12) the Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter.  On April 14 Anderson surrendered.  The next day President Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers.

[Sidenote:  The Northern volunteers. McMaster, 386-387; Source-Book, 303-305.]

[Sidenote:  Douglas, Buchanan, and Pierce]

[Sidenote:  Progress of secession.]

382.  Rising of the North.—­There was no longer a question of letting the “erring sisters” depart in peace.  The Southerners had fired on “Old Glory.”  There was no longer a dispute over the extension of slavery.  The question was now whether the Union should perish or should live.  Douglas at once came out for the Union and so did the former Presidents, Buchanan and Franklin Pierce.  In the Mississippi Valley hundreds of thousands of men either sympathized with the slaveholders or cared nothing about the slavery dispute.  But the moment the Confederates attacked the Union, they rose in defense of their country and their flag.

[Sidenote:  West Virginia.]