State from the Union." In his own peculiar style,
Mr. Lincoln made the stinging comment, "Whether this change was
wrought by their great approval of the assault upon Sumter, or by
their great resentment at the government's resistance to that
assault, is not definitely known." Though the Virginia convention
had submitted the ordinance of Secession to a vote of the people,
to be taken on a day nearly a month in the future, the President
informed Congress that "they immediately commenced acting as if
the State was already out of the Union." They seized the arsenal
at Harper's Ferry, and the navy-yard at Norfolk, and "received,
perhaps invited, large bodies of troops from the so-called seceding
States." They "sent members to their Congress at Montgomery, and
finally permitted the insurrectionary government to be transferred
to their Capitol at Richmond." Mr. Lincoln concluded with an
ominous sentence which might well have inspired Virginians with a
sense of impending peril; "The people of Virginia have thus allowed
his giant insurrection to make its nest within her borders, and
this government has no choice left but to deal with it where it
finds it." In that moment of passion these words, with all their
terrible significance, were heard by Southern men only to be jeered
at.

When the President came to specific recommendations he was brief
and pointed. He asked that Congress would place "at the control
of the government at least four hundred thousand men, and four
hundred millions of money." He said this number was about one-
tenth of those of proper age within the regions where all were
apparently willing to engage, and the sum was "less than a twenty-
third part of the money value owned by men who seem ready to devote
the whole." He argued that "a debt of six hundred millions of
dollars is now a less sum per head than the debt of the Revolution
when we came out of that struggle, and the money value in the
country bears even a greater proportion to what it was then than
does the population." "Surely," he added, "each man has as strong
a motive now to _preserve_ our liberties as each had then to
_establish_ them."

After arguing at length as to the utter fallacy of the right of
Secession, and showing how the public "mind of the South had been
drugged and insidiously debauched with the doctrine for thirty
years," the President closed his message "with the deepest regret
that he found the duty of employing the w