Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, of the Border States that were wavering, were thus gathered into the Confederate fold, by this policy of blood-spilling—carried bodily thither, by a desperate and frenzied minority, against the wishes of a patriotic majority.
Virginia, especially, was a great accession to the Rebel cause. She brought to it the prestige of her great name. To secure the active cooperation of "staid old Virginia," "the Mother of Statesmen," in the struggle, was, in the estimation of the Rebels, an assurance of victory to their cause. And the Secession of Virginia for a time had a depressing influence upon the friends of the Union everywhere.
The refusal of West Virginia to go with the rest of the State into Rebellion, was, to be sure, some consolation; and the checkmating of the Conspirators' designs to secure to the Confederacy the States of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, helped the confidence of Union men. In fact, as long as the National Capital was secure, it was felt that the Union was still safe.
But while the Confederacy, by the firing upon Fort Sumter, and thus assailing that Government which Lincoln had promised would not assail the Rebels, had gained much in securing the aid of the States mentioned, yet the Union Cause, by that very act, had gained more. For the echoes of the Rebel guns of Fort Moultrie were the signal for such an uprising of the Patriots of the North and West and Middle States, as, for the moment, struck awe to the hearts of Traitors and inspired with courage and hopefulness the hearts of Union men throughout the Land.
Moreover it put the Rebels in their proper attitude, in the eyes of the World—as the first aggressors—and thus deprived them, to a certain extent, of that moral support from the outside which flows from sympathy.
Those echoes were the signal, not only of that call to arms which led to such an uprising, but for the simultaneous calling together of the Thirty-seventh Congress of the United States in Extra Session—the Congress whose measures ultimately enabled President Lincoln and the Union Armies to subdue the Rebellion and save the Union—the Congress whose wise and patriotic deliberations resulted in the raising of those gigantic Armies and Navies, and in supplying the unlimited means, through the Tariff and National Bank Systems and otherwise, by which those tremendous Forces could be both created and effectively operated—the Congress which cooperated with President Lincoln and those Forces in preparing the way for the destruction of the very corner-stone of the Confederacy, Slavery itself.
