te Government Organized--Fort Sumter--President Lincoln
Calls for 75000 Men--Command of the Union Forces offered to Robert E.
Lee--Lee Joins the Confederacy--Missouri Saved to the Union--Battle of
Bull Run--Union Successes in the West--General Grant Captures Fort
Donelson--"I Have No Terms but Unconditional Surrender"--The Monitor and
Merrimac Fight--Its World-Wide Effect--Grant Victorious at Shiloh--Union
Naval Victory Near Memphis--That City Captured--General McClellan's
Tactics--He Retreats from Victory at Malvern Hill--Second Bull Run
Defeat--Great Battle of Antietam--Lee Repulsed, but Not Pursued--
McClellan Superseded by Burnside--Union Defeat at Frederickburg--
Union Victories in the West--Bragg Defeated by Rosecrans at Stone River
--The Emancipation Proclamation.

The new Confederate Government was organized at Montgomery, Ala.,
February 4, 1861, by delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida,
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi,
was elected President and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia,
Vice-President. The border States, which would be the battlefield of war,
still hoped for peace, and hesitated to yield to the importunities of
those who had already crossed the Rubicon. In Charleston harbor, the
American flag floated over a little fortress called Sumter, so named
after the "South Carolina Gamecock" of the Revolution, and commanded by
Major Robert Anderson. In the gray of the morning on April 12, the
Confederate batteries opened fire on the fort. For nearly two days the
Stars and Stripes waved defiantly amid the storm of shot and shell. Then
further resistance being useless and hopeless, the brave garrison
evacuated the fort, carrying away the flag which they had so resolutely
defended. Two days later President Lincoln called for 75,000 men to put
down armed resistance to national authority. The North sprang to arms,
and from East and West regiments started on their way to Washington. The
governors of Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and
Missouri declined to obey the call of the President, and the secession of
all these States from the Union followed, except Kentucky and Missouri.
On April 17, the Virginia Convention passed the Ordinance of Secession.
President Lincoln had desired to give the command of the troops to be
called into the field to Colonel Robert E. Lee, of the First United
States Cavalry, but that officer declined to accept the of