THE NATION’S RESPONSE.
The first gun that boomed against Fort Sumter struck the great American Union with a shock that vibrated from the centre to its outer verge. Every heart, true or false to the great Union, leaped to the sound, either in patriotism or treason, on that momentous day.
The North and South recoiled from each other; the one in amazement at the audacity of this first blow against the Union, the other rushing blindly after a few leaders, who had left them little choice of action, and no power of deliberation. The first news of the attack took the Government at Washington almost by surprise. President Lincoln and his Cabinet had not allowed themselves to believe that a civil war could absolutely break out in the heart of a country so blessed, so wealthy, and so accustomed to peace. True, political strife had waged fearfully; sections had clamored against sections, factions North had battled with factions South; but in a country where free speech and a free press were a crowning glory, a war of words and ideas could hardly have been expected to culminate in one of the most terrible civil wars that will crimson the world’s record.
The first boom of the cannon’s blackened lips—the first shot hurled against the stars and stripes, aroused the Government from its hopes of security. Scarcely had the telegraph wires ceased to tremble under the startling news, before the Cabinet assembled in President Lincoln’s council chamber, and when it broke up, a proclamation, calling for seventy-five thousand troops, had been decided upon, and Congress was to be convened on the Fourth of July.
The startling news, this prompt action, and the defenceless state of Washington, filled the country with wild excitement. It was known that the South had been for months drilling troops; that large portions of Virginia and Maryland were ready for revolt, and many believed that bodies of men were organized and prepared for an attack on the capital. Had this been true, had a considerable number of men marched upon Washington any time within four days after the news from Fort Sumter reached it, nothing could have saved it from capture, and probably, destruction. With only a handful of troops, and exposed at every point, no effectual resistance could have been made. The news reached Washington on Sunday; the next day such troops as could be mustered, appeared on parade. Pickets were stationed outside the town; horses were galloped furiously from point to point, and the first faint indication of this most awful civil war dawned upon a people so used to peace, that its import could not be wholly realized.
Smothered alarm prevailed in the city; a military guard was placed each night in the White House, and great anxiety was felt for the arrival of troops, which had been hastily summoned from the North.
That week the near friends of the President were under painful apprehensions for his safety. It was known to a few persons that the very gang of men who had planned his death at Baltimore, were in the neighborhood of the capital, plotting against him there. It was even known that a design existed by which a sudden descent of swift riders was to be made on the White House, with the bold object of killing Lincoln in his cabinet, or carrying him off by force into Virginia. The night-guard in the Presidential mansion was but small, and by day Lincoln had always been imprudently accessible.
The persons believed to be in this plot were brave, reckless men, accustomed to adventures of every kind, and quite capable of carrying out a programme of abduction or bloodshed under more difficult circumstances than surrounded this enterprise. But men of reckless action are seldom prudent in speech; the wild project was too exciting for proper reticence. By a few incautious words, dropped here and there, this treasonable design was fathomed; the friends of President Lincoln warned, and the whole thing quietly defeated, for the gang soon ascertained that their treason had been discovered, and, as its success depended on a surprise of the President’s household, the project was abandoned.
Meantime the news of Fort Sumter, and the call for troops, had shot its lightning along every telegraph in the Union; the response was an instantaneous uprising of the people, such as no country on earth ever witnessed before.
The great majesty of the Union had been insulted and set at defiance, and as one man, thousands upon thousands rushed around the worshipped banner of their country, firm in their patriotism, and terrible in their determination that it should never be trailed in the dust, or torn with hostile shot, unavenged.