e
was directed to secure machinery, and skilled workingmen to man it, for
the establishment of arsenals and shops, and above all to buy any vessel
afloat suitable for offensive or defensive work. Not a single ship of
any description could be had, and the intervention of the authorities
finally prevented the delivery of a single piece of machinery or the
arms he had purchased.

Major Huse was sent to Europe on the third day after the inauguration at
Montgomery on a similar mission.

General G. W. Rains was appointed to establish a manufactory for
ammunition. His work was an achievement of genius. He created artificial
niter beds, from which sufficient saltpeter was obtained, and within a
year was furnishing the finest powder.

General Gorgas was appointed Chief of Ordnance. There was but one iron
mill in the South which could cast a cannon, and that was the little
Tredegar works at Richmond, Virginia. The State of Virginia had voted
against secession and it would require the first act of war against her
Southern sisters to bring her to their defense.

The widespread belief in the North that the South had secretly prepared
for war, was utterly false, and yet the impression was of the utmost
importance to the President of the Confederacy. It gave his weak
government a fictitious strength, and gave him a brief time in which to
prepare his raw recruits for their first battle.

Day and night he prayed for peace at any sacrifice save that of honor.
The first bloodshed would be the match in the powder magazine. He
pressed his Commissioners in Washington for haste.

The inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln had been so carefully worded,
its utterances so conservative and guarded, his expressions of good will
toward the South so surprisingly emphatic, that Davis could not believe
an act of aggression which would bring bloodshed could be committed by
his order.

And yet day dragged after day with no opportunity afforded his
Commissioners to treat with the new Administration save through the
undignified course of an intermediary. The Southern President ordered
that all questions of form or ceremony be waived.

Seward, the Secretary of State, gave to these Commissioners repeated
assurances of the peaceful intention of the Government at Washington,
and the most positive promise that Fort Sumter would be evacuated. He
also declared that no measure would be instituted either by the
Executive or Congress changing the situation