ed at Washington the day the Confederate Congress
met at Montgomery. Though twenty-one States sent delegates, it was no
more able to effect a working scheme of compromise than was the House
committee of thirty-three or the Senate committee of thirteen, both of
which had striven, had failed, and had gone their ways to a place in the
great company of historic futilities.

And so the Peace Convention came and went, and there was no consolation
for the troubled men of the upper South who did not want to secede but
were resolved not to abandon local autonomy. Virginia was the key to the
situation. If Virginia could be forced into secession, the rest of the
upper South would inevitably follow. Therefore a Virginia hothead, Roger
A. Pryor, being in Charleston in those wavering days, poured out his
heart in fiery words, urging a Charleston crowd to precipitate war, in
the certainty that Virginia would then have to come to their aid. When
at last Sumter was fired upon and Lincoln called for volunteers, the
second stage of the secession movement ended in a thunderclap. The third
period was occupied by the second group of secessions: Virginia on the
17th of April, North Carolina and Arkansas during May, Tennessee early
in June.

Sumter was the turning-point. The boom of the first cannon trained on
the island fortress deserves all the rhetoric it has inspired. Who was
immediately responsible for that firing which was destiny? Ultimate
responsibility is not upon any person. War had to be. If Sumter had not
been the starting-point, some other would have been found. Nevertheless
the question of immediate responsibility, of whose word it was that
served as the signal to begin, has produced an historic controversy.

When it was known at Charleston that Lincoln would attempt to provision
the fort, the South Carolina authorities referred the matter to
the Confederate authorities. The Cabinet, in a fateful session at
Montgomery, hesitated--drawn between the wish to keep their hold upon
the moderates of the North, who were trying to stave off war, and the
desire to precipitate Virginia into the lists. Toombs, Secretary of
State in the new Government, wavered; then seemed to find his resolution
and came out strong against a demand for surrender. "It is suicide,
murder, and will lose us every friend at the North.... It is
unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal," said he. But the
Cabinet and the President decided to take the risk.