The inauguration
On March 4, with soldiers guarding the capitol, Lincoln read his inaugural address and took the oath of office which all presidents before him had taken. This speech was listened to with the greatest interest. It was now plain to everybody that Lincoln meant to fight, if fighting were necessary to save the Union.
In April Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. After awful hardships, Colonel Anderson and his men surrendered the fort to the Confederate troops.
The call for men
Lincoln immediately sent forth the call for seventy-five thousand men. He made it a call to save the Union which Jackson, Webster, and Clay had done so much to save. War had come—civil war, the most dreadful kind of war. Four more states left the Union, and joined the Confederate States. But the slave states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri remained with the Union.
Blockade of Confederate States
While the Union troops were gathering and drilling in Washington, Lincoln declared a blockade of the ports of the Confederate States. He saw that if he closed the ports of the South he could prevent the shipment of cotton to Europe and so keep the Confederacy from getting supplies in exchange for the cotton. This was a heavy blow to the Confederates.
THE CONFEDERATE STATES
The "Merrimac" and the "Monitor"