of kings,” the shotted cannon.  “Mr. President,” he exclaimed, “at this time, it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North.  You will instantly strike a hornet’s nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death.  It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal.”  But Toombs stood alone in the Cabinet.  Orders were sent to Charleston to reduce Fort Sumter.  Before dawn, April twelfth, the first shot was fired.  The flag of the United States was hauled down on the afternoon of the thirteenth.  Meanwhile the relieving fleet had arrived—­without the Powhatan.  Bereft of its great ship, it could not pass the harbor batteries and assist the fort.  Its only service was to take off the garrison which by the terms of surrender was allowed to withdraw.  On the fourteenth, Sumter was evacuated and the inglorious fleet sailed back to the northward.

Lincoln at once accepted the gage of battle.  On the fifteenth appeared his proclamation calling for an army of seventy-five thousand volunteers.  Automatically, the upper South fulfilled its unhappy destiny.  Challenged at last, on the irreconcilable issue, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, seceded.  The final argument of kings was the only one remaining.

XVI “ON TO RICHMOND!”

It has been truly said that the Americans are an unmilitary but an intensely warlike nation.  Seward’s belief that a war fury would sweep the country at the first cannon shot was amply justified.  Both North and South appeared to rise as one man, crying fiercely to be led to battle.

The immediate effect on Washington had not been foreseen.  That historic clash at Baltimore between the city’s mob and the Sixth Massachusetts en route to the capital, was followed by an outburst of secession feeling in Maryland; by an attempt to isolate Washington from the North.  Railway tracks were torn up; telegraph wires were cut.  During several days Lincoln was entirely ignorant of what the North was doing.  Was there an efficient general response to his call for troops?  Or was precious time being squandered in preparation?  Was it conceivable that the war fury was only talk?  Looking forth from the White House, he was a prisoner of the horizon; an impenetrable mystery, it shut the capital in a ring of silence all but intolerable.  Washington assumed the air of a beleaguered city.  General Scott hastily drew in the small forces which the government had maintained in Maryland and Virginia.  Government employees and loyal Washingtonians were armed and began to drill.  The White House became a barracks.  “Jim Lane,” writes delightful John Hay in his diary, which is always cool, rippling, sunny, no matter how acute the crisis, “Jim Lane marshalled his Kansas warriors today at Williard’s; tonight (they are in) the East Room."(1) Hay’s humor brightens the tragic hour.  He felt it his duty