broke forth almost simultaneously strong manifestations of impatience.  The genuine President at Washington and the sham President at Montgomery were assailed by the like pressing demand:  Why did they not do something to settle this matter?  Southern irascibility found the situation exceedingly trying.  The imposing and dramatic attitude of the Confederate States had not achieved an appropriate result.  They had organized a government and posed as an independent nation, but no power in the civilized world had yet recognized them in this character; on the contrary, Abraham Lincoln, living hard by in the White House, was explicitly denying it, contumaciously alleging himself to be their lawful ruler, and waiting with an exasperating patience to see what they were really going to do in the business which they had undertaken.  They must make some move or they would become ridiculous, and their revolution would die and their confederacy would dissolve from sheer inanition.  The newspapers told their leaders this plainly; and a prominent gentleman of Alabama said to Mr. Davis:  “Sir, unless you sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back in the Union in ten days.”  On the other hand, the people of the North were as energetic as the sons of the South were excitable, and with equal urgency they also demanded a conclusion.  If the Union was to be enforced, why did not Mr. Lincoln enforce it?  How long did he mean placidly to suffer treason and a rival government to rest undisturbed within the country?

With this state of feeling growing rapidly more intense in both sections, action was inevitable.  Yet neither leader wished to act first, even for the important purpose of gratifying the popular will.  As where two men are resolved to fight, yet have an uneasy vision of a judge and jury in waiting for them, each seeks to make the other the assailant and himself to be upon his defense, so these two rulers took prudent thought of the tribunal of public sentiment not in America alone but in Europe also, with perhaps a slight forward glance towards posterity.  If Mr. Lincoln did not like to “invade” the Southern territory, Mr. Davis was equally reluctant to make the Southern “withdrawal” actively belligerent through operations of military offense.  Both men were capable of statesmanlike waiting to score a point that was worth waiting for; Davis had been for years biding the ripeness of time, but Lincoln had the capacity of patience beyond any precedent on record.

The spot where the strain came, where this question of the first blow must be settled, was at Fort Sumter, in the mid-throat of Charleston harbor.  On December 27, 1860, by a skillful movement at night, Major Anderson, the commander at Fort Moultrie, had transferred his scanty force from that dilapidated and untenable post on the shore to the more defensible and more important position of Fort Sumter.  Thereafter a precarious relationship betwixt peace and war had subsisted between