ferson
Davis the government's refusal to receive them. The answer to the
commissioners, and the determination not to permit Anderson to be
starved out of Fort Sumter with the hostile guns of the Confederacy
pointed at him, brought on the conflict. As soon as the two events
were made public, the Confederate Secretary of War instructed
General Beauregard that if the information conveyed to Governor
Pickens was authentic, he should proceed to reduce the fort. The
conflict came on the 12th of April, and after a furious cannonade
of thirty-four hours, Major Anderson, being out of provisions, was
compelled to surrender. The fleet that was bringing him relief
arrived too late, and the flag of the United States was lowered to
the Confederacy. Those who had urged Mr. Davis to strike a blow
and to sprinkle blood in the faces of the people as a means of
consolidating Southern opinion, were undoubtedly successful.
Throughout the States of the Confederacy the inhabitants were crazed
with success. They had taken from the National Government its
strongest fortress on the South-Atlantic coast. They felt suddenly
awakened to a sense of power, and became wild with confidence in
their ability to defy the authority of the United States.

EFFECT OF FORT SUMTER'S FALL.

The Confederate Government, however, had not anticipated the effect
of an actual conflict on the people of the North. Until the hour
of the assault on Sumter they had every reason for believing that
Mr. Lincoln's administration was weak; that it had not a sustaining
force of public opinion behind it in the free States; that, in
short, Northern people were divided very much on the line of previous
party organizations, and that his opponents had been steadily
gaining, his supporters as steadily losing, since the day of the
Presidential election in November. The Confederates naturally
counted much on this condition of Northern sentiment, and took to
themselves the comforting assurance that vigorous war could never
be made by a divided people. They had treasured all the extreme
sayings of Northern Democrats about resisting the march of a Black
Republican army towards the South, and offering their dead bodies
as obstructions to its progress. They believed, and had good reason
for believing, that half the population of the North was opposed
to the policy of subjugation, and they accepted the creed of Mr.
Buchanan that ther