English dealings with us ever since. And
now I reach the last of my large historic matters, the Civil War, and
our war with Spain.

Chapter XII: On the Ragged Edge

On November 6, 1860, Lincoln, nominee of the Republican party, which was
opposed to the extension of slavery, was elected President of the
United States. Forty-one days later, the legislature of South Carolina,
determined to perpetuate slavery, met at Columbia, but, on account of a
local epidemic, moved to Charleston. There, about noon, December 20th,
it unanimously declared "that the Union now subsisting between South
Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of
America, is hereby dissolved." Soon other slave states followed this
lead, and among them all, during those final months of Buchanan's
presidency, preparedness went on, unchecked by the half-feeble,
half-treacherous Federal Government. Lincoln, in his inaugural address,
March 4, 1861, declared that he had no purpose, directly or indirectly,
to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where
it existed. To the seceded slave states he said: "In your hands, my
dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not mine, is the momentous issue of
civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict
without being yourselves the aggressors. You can have no oath registered
in heaven to destroy the Government; while I shall have the most solemn
one to preserve, protect and defend it." This changed nothing in the
slave states. It was not enough for them that slavery could keep on
where it was. To spread it where it was not, had been their aim for a
very long while. The next day, March 5th, Lincoln had letters from Fort
Sumter, in Charleston harbor. Major Anderson was besieged there by the
batteries of secession, was being starved out, might hold on a
month longer, needed help. Through staggering complications and
embarrassments, which were presently to be outstaggered by worse ones,
Lincoln by the end of March saw his path clear. "In your hands, my
dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not mine, is the momentous issue of
civil war." The clew to the path had been in those words from the first.
The flag of the Union, the little island of loyalty amid the waters of
secession, was covered by the Charleston batteries. "Batteries ready
to open Wednesday or Thursday. What instructions?" Thus, on April 1st,
General Beauregard, at Charleston, telegraphed to Jefferson Davis. T