December 20, 1860, South Carolina; January 9, 1861, Mississippi; January 10, Florida; January 11, Alabama; January 18, Georgia; January 23, Louisiana, and February 1, Texas, one by one asserted their supposed right to withdraw from the federal compact, and enacted ordinances of secession in their several state conventions. Each State, as it took action, claimed and possessed itself of all government property, forts, guns, ammunition, within its borders, and armed its militia for garrison duty. A convention of delegates from the seceded States, held February 4, 1861, at Montgomery, Alabama, organized a new federation, to be known as the Confederate States of America, chose Jefferson Davis President and Alexander Stephens Vice-President, and set the whole machinery of a provisional government in working order. July 20, Richmond became the capital of the Southern Confederacy. Virginia seceded April 17; Arkansas, May 6; North Carolina, May 20, and Tennessee, June 8. Kentucky declared neutrality.
Lincoln, upon assuming the executive chair, March 4, 1861, found the treasury depleted, the army of only sixteen thousand men scattered in the West, and many of its best officers already with the Confederacy. The navy had been sadly neglected by Congress, partly because this branch of the service had been steadily antagonized by the West, so that at the beginning of the war, both as to vessels and armament, it was by no means in a condition for active service. As in the army, some of its most valuable officers had espoused the cause of their native States, and the South Atlantic and Gulf ports, being in possession of the new federation, left the United States vessels no place of refuge. With unlimited means at command, the Union navy increased the number of its vessels to 588—75 of them ironclads—with 4443 guns and 30,000 men, before the end of 1862. Torpedoes and steel rams were first used during this war, and monitors, just invented, were used by the United States. With a nucleus of 10 vessels, around which to build its navy, the Confederacy had, by November, raised the number to 34. Until the blockade became effective, “cotton was king;” for, in October, 1861, the Nashville, running out with a heavy consignment, brought back into Charleston in exchange a cargo worth $3,000,000. Vessel after vessel was bought from English shipbuilders, among them the celebrated Alabama, which, in the fourteen months of her service, captured sixty-nine prizes, and destroyed ten million dollars’ worth of merchandise. The armored ram Stonewall was bought in France.
April 12, 1861, Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, was forced to surrender to the Confederates, and the first shot at the old flag ushered in the long, bitter struggle.
Troops were called for by Lincoln. Lieutenant-General Scott, the veteran hero of Mexico, was in command of the army. In three months, three hundred thousand men were in the field. One hundred thousand had swarmed to the Confederate ranks. General McClellan was sent to the front and, after the resignation of Scott in the latter part of the year, was made commander of the army.
July 21, the battle of Bull Run was fought. The Union troops were disastrously routed and retreated in confusion to Washington. The army did little more during this year.
CASTLE WILLIAM. MILITARY PRISON, GOVERNOR’S ISLAND, NEW YORK HARBOR.
April 21, after setting fire to and destroying the Navy Yard and ships, Norfolk was evacuated by the Union forces. The frigate Merrimac, which had been sunk, was raised by the Confederates, plated with iron, renamed “Virginia,” and became the scourge of the shipping off the Virginia coast.
The navy, as is usual, and because of its very organization, got in its effective work much earlier than did the army, and the seizure of the forts and ports on the coast of the seceded States began at once. Fort Hatteras was taken August 29; Port Royal, in South Carolina, November 7. November 7 a naval officer, by overhauling an English mail steamer and taking off Messrs. Mason and Slidell, who had been appointed commissioners of the Confederate States to France and England, very nearly caused a complication with the latter power. Mr. Seward’s diplomacy settled the incident amicably, and the commissioners were allowed to proceed upon their mission, which, however, proved futile. By the close of the year, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, at first doubtful, were securely in the Union, though many of their citizens were in the Southern army.
1862.—February 6, General Grant, commanding the army of the Tennessee, with the assistance of Commodore Foote and his gunboats, captured Fort Henry, on the Tennessee River, and, on the 16th, Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. The Federal forces had reached the number of four hundred and fifty thousand, of which McClellan had two hundred thousand.