he Union in ten days." On the other hand, the people of the North
were as energetic as the sons of the South were excitable, and with
equal urgency they also demanded a conclusion. If the Union was to be
enforced, why did not Mr. Lincoln enforce it? How long did he mean
placidly to suffer treason and a rival government to rest undisturbed
within the country?

With this state of feeling growing rapidly more intense in both
sections, action was inevitable. Yet neither leader wished to act first,
even for the important purpose of gratifying the popular will. As where
two men are resolved to fight, yet have an uneasy vision of a judge and
jury in waiting for them, each seeks to make the other the assailant and
himself to be upon his defense, so these two rulers took prudent thought
of the tribunal of public sentiment not in America alone but in Europe
also, with perhaps a slight forward glance towards posterity. If Mr.
Lincoln did not like to "invade" the Southern territory, Mr. Davis was
equally reluctant to make the Southern "withdrawal" actively belligerent
through operations of military offense. Both men were capable of
statesmanlike waiting to score a point that was worth waiting for; Davis
had been for years biding the ripeness of time, but Lincoln had the
capacity of patience beyond any precedent on record.

The spot where the strain came, where this question of the first blow
must be settled, was at Fort Sumter, in the mid-throat of Charleston
harbor. On December 27, 1860, by a skillful movement at night, Major
Anderson, the commander at Fort Moultrie, had transferred his scanty
force from that dilapidated and untenable post on the shore to the more
defensible and more important position of Fort Sumter. Thereafter a
precarious relationship betwixt peace and war had subsisted between him
and the South Carolinians. It was distinctly understood that, sooner or
later, by negotiation or by force, South Carolina intended to possess
herself of this fortress. From her point of view it certainly was
preposterous and unendurable that the key to her chief harbor and city
should be permanently held by a "foreign" power. Gradually she erected
batteries on the neighboring mainland, and kept a close surveillance
upon the troops now more than half besieged in the fort.

Under the Buchanan regime the purpose of the United States government
had been less plain than it became after Mr. Lincoln's accession; for
Buchanan had not the c