to press. Even so
sober a man as General Lee expected success and thought of his role as
like that of Washington, who was now the Southern model and ideal.
Davis's friends also spoke and wrote of him as the "second Washington."

Thus filled with the highest hopes and reminded daily of the heroic
traditions of the former revolution, the Southerners began their
battles. President Lincoln, loath to admit that war was upon him, called
out 75,000 three months' men when the news of Fort Sumter reached him.
Congress, too, was called in extra session for July 4 to devise ways and
means of compelling the South to return to the fold. These warlike acts,
to those who did not understand the long sectional rivalry, were
supported by an almost unanimous North. The Northwest, led by Douglas,
was prompt to support their first real President and to hasten their
quota of volunteers to the front. In the older sections of the East the
latent hostility toward the people of the South flamed out as never
before, proclaiming a devotion to the Union and to the ideals of the
Fathers which had widespread effect. Even in the great cities, where the
prevailing sentiment in the preceding winter had been for peace and a
permanent disruption of the Union, men rallied to the national standards
with unexpected enthusiasm. The Astors, Belmonts, and Drexels raised
regiments or offered loans to the Administration. If the South was
united and ready to defend their homes, the North seemed equally united
upon a program of invasion and subjection. A solid South had begotten a
solid North. The shells which burst over Fort Sumter had called the
North to arms as effectively as they had banished the hesitation of the
Southern border States.

An army of invasion gathered rapidly in Washington, seized Arlington,
General Lee's ancient family estate, on the Virginia shore of the
Potomac, for a drill ground, took possession of recalcitrant Maryland,
and made of all railroads entering the capital the highways and
instruments of war. Winfield Scott, the old and vacillating general of
the regular army, was quickly set aside, and the able General Irvin
McDowell took his place. Thirty thousand troops moved slowly into
Virginia under the pressure of public opinion stimulated by newspaper
editors, ministers of the Gospel, and stiff-backed Republicans, who,
like similar classes in the South, declared that the war was to be over
in three months. Other armies collected at Cinc