A School History of the United States

by John Bach McMaster

[Illustration: The United States July 1861 Showing the greatest extension of the Southern Confederacy]

%428. Results of firing on the Flag.%—Not a man was killed on either side during the bombardment of Sumter. Yet the battle was a famous one, and led to greater consequences:

1. Lincoln at once called for 75,000 militia to serve for three months.

2. Four "border states," as they were called, thus forced to choose their side, seceded. They were Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee.

3. The Congress of the United States was called to meet at Washington, July 4, 1861.

4. After Virginia seceded, the capital of the Confederacy, at the invitation of the Virginia secession convention, was moved from Montgomery to Richmond, and the Confederate Congress adjourned to meet there July 20, 1861.

%429. West Virginia.%—The act of secession by Virginia was promptly repudiated by the people of the counties west of the mountains, who refused to secede, and voted to form a new state under the name of Kanawha. They adopted a constitution and were finally admitted in 1863 as the state of West Virginia[1].

[Footnote 1: A state made out of part of another state cannot be admitted into the Union without the consent of that state first obtained. But as Congress and the people of West Virginia considered that Virginia consisted of that part of the Old Dominion which remained loyal to the Union, the people practically asked their own consent.]

%430. The Call to Arms.%—Lincoln held that no state could ever leave the Union, and that therefore no state had left the Union. Those which had passed ordinances of secession were to his mind states whose machinery of government had been seized on by persons in insurrection against the government of the United States. When, therefore, he made his call for 75,000 militia to defend the Union, he apportioned the number among all the states, slave and free, north and south, east and west, according to their population. Those forming the Confederacy paid no attention to the call. The governors of the border slave states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri) returned evasive or insulting answers.

But the people of the loyal states responded instantly, and tens of thousands of troops were soon on their way to Washington. To get there was a hard matter. Baltimore lay on the most direct railroad route between the Eastern and Middle States and Washington. But Baltimore was full of disloyal men, who tore up the railroads, burned bridges, cut the telegraph wires, and as the Massachusetts 6th regiment was passing through the city from one railroad station to another, attacked it, killing some and wounding others of its soldiers. This forced the troops from the other states to go by various routes to Annapolis and then to Washington, so that it was late in April before enough arrived to insure the safety of the city.