ce of the United States in
the suppression of an "unlawful combination." Their service, however,
would expire by law thirty days after the next meeting of Congress,
and, in compliance with a further requirement of law upon this subject,
the President also summoned Congress to meet in extraordinary session
upon July 4. The Army already in the service of the United States
consisted of but 16,000 officers and men, and, though the men of this
force, being less affected by State ties than their officers, remained,
as did the men of the Navy, true almost without exception to their
allegiance, all but 3,000 of them were unavailable and scattered in
small frontier forts in the West. A few days later, when it became
plain that the struggle might long outlast the three months of the
Militia, the President called for Volunteers to enlist for three years'
service, and perhaps (for the statements are conflicting) some 300,000
troops of one kind and another had been raised by June.

The affair of Fort Sumter and the President's Proclamation at once
aroused and concentrated the whole public opinion of the free States in
the North and, in an opposite sense, of the States which had already
seceded. The border slave States had now to declare for the one side
or for the other. Virginia as a whole joined the Southern Confederacy
forthwith, but several Counties in the mountainous region of the west
of that State were strongly for the Union. These eventually succeeded
with the support of Northern troops in separating from Virginia and
forming the new State of West Virginia. Tennessee also joined the
South, though in Eastern Tennessee the bulk of the people held out for
the Union without such good fortune as their neighbours in West
Virginia. Arkansas beyond the Mississippi followed the same example,
though there were some doubt and division in all parts of that State.
In Delaware, where the slaves were very few, the Governor did not
formally comply with the President's Proclamation, but the people as a
whole responded to it. The attitude of Maryland, which almost
surrounds Washington, kept the Government at the capital in suspense
and alarm for a while, for both the city of Baltimore and the existing
State legislature were inclined to the South. In Kentucky and Missouri
the State authorities were also for the South, and it was only after a
struggle, and in Missouri much actual fighting, that the Unionist
majority of the people in e