in his inaugural,--to maintain the essential
rights of the national government, but with the least possible exercise
of force. He would "hold, occupy, and possess the property and places
belonging to the government, and collect the duties and imports"--that
and nothing more. Practically the only "property and places" now left to
the government at the South were Forts Sumter and Pickens. To yield them
without effort was to renounce the minimum of self-assertion he had
reserved to the nation.

As to the means of supply, he had recourse to the best instrument that
offered,--a scheme proposed by Captain Fox, an energetic naval officer,
who planned a relief expedition of five vessels to be privately
dispatched from New York and try to run past the batteries. The
expedition was quickly fitted out and sent, in early April. According to
promise, in case of any such action, notice was telegraphed to the
Governor of South Carolina. He communicated with the Confederate
government at Montgomery. That government was bent on maintaining,
without further debate, its full sovereignty over the coasts and waters
within its jurisdiction. There is no need to impute a deliberate purpose
to rouse and unite the South by bloodshed, any more than there is reason
to impute to Lincoln a crafty purpose to inveigle the South into
striking the first blow. Each acted straight in the line of their open
and avowed purpose,--Lincoln, to retain the remaining vestige of
national authority at the South; the Confederacy, to make full and
prompt assertion of its entire independence.

Orders were telegraphed from Montgomery, and General Beauregard,
commanding the Charleston forces, sent to Major Anderson a summons to
surrender. It was rejected; and the circle of forts opened fire and
Sumter fired back. The roar of those guns flashed by telegraph over the
country. In every town and hamlet men watched and waited with a tension
which cannot be described. All the accumulated feeling of months and
years flashed into a lightning stroke of emotion. All day Friday and
Saturday, April 12, 13, men watched the bulletins, and talked in brief
phrases, and were conscious of a passion surging through millions of
hearts. Saturday evening came the word,--the fort had yielded. After a
thirty-four hours' fight, overmatched, the expected relief
storm-delayed, his ammunition spent, his works on fire, Anderson had
capitulated.

There was a Sunday of intense brooding all over t