The news of the victory was flashed through the land, and the nation stood aghast, to find that the Great Rebellion had begun.
CHAPTER XV.
DARK DAYS FOE THE UNION.
President Lincoln's Appeal to the Country—Dark Days for the Northern States—A Decisive Battle—Glorious News.
The question of slavery was the real cause of the American Civil War, though in the first instance the object of the North was solely to save the Union. Six of the slave States had withdrawn from the Union. They had appointed as their President Jefferson Davis, and had attempted to seize all the arms and forts within the border of the States.
The ease with which Fort Sumter had fallen into their hands encouraged them to believe that they could easily snap the bonds which held the Union together. In the South the white population was supposed to be far superior to their Northern neighbours in all the arts of war.
Their position as slave-masters had bred in them an arrogant temper and a reckless spirit. They were more practised at the rifle, better used to horsemanship, and more familiar with field sports, than the men of the North. And they fondly boasted that one Virginian could beat five Yankees.
Indeed, the Southern States were so confident of their strength, that they did not really believe the North would fight; they might protest, they said, but that would be all.
But men who talked like this little understood the intense love of country which burned in Northern hearts. The moment Fort Sumter fell, Lincoln appealed to the country for seventy-five thousand soldiers, and within three days nearly a hundred thousand men had volunteered.