tary Institute on the morning of the 9th of March, 1861;
and it was but one of many similar scenes which, for some time past, had
been of almost daily occurrence in many parts of the South. It had been
brought about by the efforts of a band of young secessionists, headed by
Rodney Gray, to haul down the academy flag, and to hoist in its place a
strange banner--one that nobody had ever seen or heard of previous to
the 4th of March, the day on which Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated President
of the United States. The students who were gathered on the top of the
tower at the time our story begins were Southern boys without exception,
but they did not all believe in secession and disunion. Many of them
were loyal to the old flag, and were not ready to see it hauled down,
and a strange piece of bunting run up in its place.

Those were exciting times in our country's history, you may be sure.
Rumors of war filled the air on every side. Seven States had rebelled
and defied the authority of the government, and for no other reason than
because a man they did not like had been elected President. A new
government had been established at Montgomery, and formally inaugurated
on the 18th of February. Jefferson Davis, President of the seceded
States, had been authorized to accept the services of one hundred
thousand volunteers to serve for one year, unless sooner discharged, and
they were to be mustered to "repel invasion, maintain the rightful
possession of the Confederate States of America, and secure the public
tranquillity against threatened assault." Every schoolboy who has paid
any attention to his history knows that there was not the slightest
excuse for calling this immense army into existence. The disunion
leaders repeatedly declared that Northern men would not fight, and they
seemed to have good grounds for thinking so; for, although Fort Sumter
was surrounded by hostile batteries, no attempt had been made to send
supplies to Major Anderson and the gallant fellows who were shut up in
the fort with him, and more than five weeks passed after the formation
of the Confederate government before President Lincoln called for
seventy-five thousand militia to "suppress unlawful combinations, and to
cause the laws to be duly executed." But this unnecessary act of the
Confederate Provisional Congress had just the effect it was intended to
have. It "fired the Southern heart," and immediately every man, woman,
and boy "took sides." The papers