etter ends)
told the people that only one thing was necessary to force Virginia
into the Southern Confederacy: "to strike a blow." That done, he
promised them that "Virginia would secede in less than an hour by
Shrewsbury clock."

The indifference of Mr. Lincoln's administration to the program of
the Southern Confederacy was apparent and not real. In his Inaugural
he had declared that the power confided to him would be used to
hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the
government, and to collect the duties and imposts, but, beyond what
was necessary for those objects, there would be no invasion, no
use of force against or among the people anywhere. Influential
persons connected with Mr. Lincoln's administration may have wavered
in regard to the expediency of re-enforcing Major Anderson and
holding possession of Fort Sumter, but the President himself wisely
concluded that to retreat from that point would be an almost fatal
step. There was not a citizen in the North who had not become
interested in the fate of Major Anderson and the brave soldiers
under his command. Though many patriotic men of conservative or
timid nature advised a quiet withdrawal from Fort Sumter rather
than an open conflict for its possession, there was an instinctive
undertone in the masses of the people in the Northern States against
a concession so humiliating. If prestige were needed for the
government at Montgomery, Mr. Lincoln felt that it was needed for
the government at Washington, and if he withdrew from Sumter he
could not see any point where he could make a stand.

The President determined, therefore, to send supplies to Major
Anderson. He wisely saw that if he failed to do this he would be
receding from the temperate and conservative position taken in the
Inaugural, and that it would give to the Confederates a degree of
courage, and to the North a degree of despondency, which would
vastly increase the difficulty of restoring the Union. In Mr.
Lincoln's own language: "the abandonment of Sumter would be utterly
ruinous, under the circumstances." . . . "At home it would discourage
the friends of the Union, embolden its adversaries, and go far to
insure to the latter a recognition abroad. In fact, it would be
our national destruction consummated." Having taken this determination,
he communicated it to Governor Pickens of South Carolina just at
the time that Mr. Seward delivered to the commissioners of Jef