to assail that Government which would not assail them. They opened fire
on Fort Sumter.

This was done, as has duly appeared, in the hope that the shedding of
blood would not only draw the States of the Southern Confederacy more
closely together in their common cause, and prevent the return of any of
them to their old allegiance, but also to so influence the wavering
allegiance to the Union, of the Border States, as to strengthen that
Confederacy and equivalently weaken that Union, by their Secession.

Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, of the Border States
that were wavering, were thus gathered into the Confederate fold, by
this policy of blood-spilling--carried bodily thither, by a desperate
and frenzied minority, against the wishes of a patriotic majority.

Virginia, especially, was a great accession to the Rebel cause. She
brought to it the prestige of her great name. To secure the active
cooperation of "staid old Virginia," "the Mother of Statesmen," in the
struggle, was, in the estimation of the Rebels, an assurance of victory
to their cause. And the Secession of Virginia for a time had a
depressing influence upon the friends of the Union everywhere.

The refusal of West Virginia to go with the rest of the State into
Rebellion, was, to be sure, some consolation; and the checkmating of the
Conspirators' designs to secure to the Confederacy the States of
Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, helped the confidence of Union men. In
fact, as long as the National Capital was secure, it was felt that the
Union was still safe.

But while the Confederacy, by the firing upon Fort Sumter, and thus
assailing that Government which Lincoln had promised would not assail
the Rebels, had gained much in securing the aid of the States mentioned,
yet the Union Cause, by that very act, had gained more. For the echoes
of the Rebel guns of Fort Moultrie were the signal for such an uprising
of the Patriots of the North and West and Middle States, as, for the
moment, struck awe to the hearts of Traitors and inspired with courage
and hopefulness the hearts of Union men throughout the Land.

Moreover it put the Rebels in their proper attitude, in the eyes of the
World--as the first aggressors--and thus deprived them, to a certain
extent, of that moral support from the outside which flows from
sympathy.

Those echoes were the signal, not only of that call to arms which led to
such an uprising, but for the simultaneou