t he is." In this dust-cloud of glowing
rhetoric vanished the last deceit of peaceful settlement.

About the same time, April 13, sundry commissioners from the Virginia
convention waited upon Lincoln with the request that he would
communicate the policy which he intended to pursue towards the
Confederate States. Lincoln replied with a patient civility that cloaked
satire: "Having at the beginning of my official term expressed my
intended policy as plainly as I was able, it is with deep regret and
some mortification I now learn that there is great and injurious
uncertainty in the public mind as to what that policy is, and what
course I intend to pursue." To this ratification of the plain position
taken in his inaugural, he added that he might see fit to repossess
himself of the public property, and that possibly he might withdraw the
mail service from the seceding States.

The inauguration of Mr. Lincoln was followed by a lull which endured for
several weeks. A like repose reigned contemporaneously in the
Confederate States. For a while the people in both sections received
with content this reaction of quiescence. But as the same laws of human
nature were operative equally at the North and at the South, it soon
came about that both at the North and at the South there broke forth
almost simultaneously strong manifestations of impatience. The genuine
President at Washington and the sham President at Montgomery were
assailed by the like pressing demand: Why did they not do something to
settle this matter? Southern irascibility found the situation
exceedingly trying. The imposing and dramatic attitude of the
Confederate States had not achieved an appropriate result. They had
organized a government and posed as an independent nation, but no power
in the civilized world had yet recognized them in this character; on the
contrary, Abraham Lincoln, living hard by in the White House, was
explicitly denying it, contumaciously alleging himself to be their
lawful ruler, and waiting with an exasperating patience to see what they
were really going to do in the business which they had undertaken. They
must make some move or they would become ridiculous, and their
revolution would die and their confederacy would dissolve from sheer
inanition. The newspapers told their leaders this plainly; and a
prominent gentleman of Alabama said to Mr. Davis: "Sir, unless you
sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back
in t