The crowd mind acts on blind impulse, never on reason.
In spite of the President's humane purpose to keep peace when he delivered his first inaugural, he had scarcely taken his seat at the head of his Cabinet when the mob mind swept him from his moorings and he was caught in the torrent of the war mania.
The firing on Fort Sumter was not the first shot by the Secessionists. They had fired on the Star of the West, a ship sent to the relief of the Fort, weeks before. They had driven her back to sea. But the President at that moment had sufficient power to withstand the cry for blood. At the next shot he succumbed to the inevitable and called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South. This act of war was a violation of his powers under Constitutional law. Congress alone could declare war. But Congress was not in session.
The mob had, in fact, declared war. The President and his Cabinet were forced to bow to its will and risk their necks on the outcome of the struggle.
So long as Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee refused to secede and stood with the Border States of Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky inside the Union, the Confederacy organized at Montgomery, Alabama, must remain a mere political feint.
The call of the President on Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland, all slave States, to furnish their quota of troops to fight the seceders, was in effect a declaration of war by a united North upon the South.
Virginia had refused to join the Confederacy before by an overwhelming majority. All eyes were again turned on the Old Dominion. Would she accept the President's command and send her quota of troops to fight her sisters of the South, or would she withdraw from the Union?
The darkest day of its history was dawning on Arlington. Lee had spent a sleepless night watching the flickering lights of the Capitol, waiting, hoping, praying for a message from the Convention at Richmond. On that message hung the present, the future, and the sacred glory of the past.
The lamp on the table in the hall was still burning dimly at dawn when Mary Lee came downstairs and pulled the old-fashioned bell cord which summoned the butler.
Ben entered with a bow.