ch was to
decide these questions neither side was ready, but the South was better
prepared than the North. The South was united as one man. The North was
divided and full of Southern sympathizers. She knew not whom to trust.
Officers of the army, officers of the navy, were resigning every day.
The great departments of government at Washington contained many men who
furnished information to Southern officials. Seventeen steam war vessels
(two thirds of all that were not laid up or unfit for service) were in
foreign parts. Large quantities of military supplies had been stored in
Southern forts. All the great powers of Europe save Russia were hostile
to our republic, and would gladly have seen it rent in twain. The South,
again, had the advantage in that she was to act on the defensive.

[Illustration: The United States July 1861 Showing the greatest
extension of the Southern Confederacy]

%428. Results of firing on the Flag.%--Not a man was killed on either
side during the bombardment of Sumter. Yet the battle was a famous one,
and led to greater consequences:

1. Lincoln at once called for 75,000 militia to serve for three months.

2. Four "border states," as they were called, thus forced to choose
their side, seceded. They were Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia, and
Tennessee.

3. The Congress of the United States was called to meet at Washington,
July 4, 1861.

4. After Virginia seceded, the capital of the Confederacy, at the
invitation of the Virginia secession convention, was moved from
Montgomery to Richmond, and the Confederate Congress adjourned to meet
there July 20, 1861.

%429. West Virginia.%--The act of secession by Virginia was promptly
repudiated by the people of the counties west of the mountains, who
refused to secede, and voted to form a new state under the name of
Kanawha. They adopted a constitution and were finally admitted in 1863
as the state of West Virginia[1].

[Footnote 1: A state made out of part of another state cannot be
admitted into the Union without the consent of that state first
obtained. But as Congress and the people of West Virginia considered
that Virginia consisted of that part of the Old Dominion which remained
loyal to the Union, the people practically asked their own consent.]

%430. The Call to Arms.%--Lincoln held that no state could ever leave
the Union, and that therefore no state had left the Union. Those which
had passed ordinances of secession were to his mind