as in need of supplies, and in the first week of the new year
Buchanan attempted to relieve its wants. But a merchant vessel, the Star
of the West, by which supplies were sent, was fired upon by the South
Carolina authorities as it approached the harbor and was compelled to
turn back. This incident caused the withdrawal from the Cabinet of the
last opposition members--Thompson, of Mississippi, the Secretary of the
Interior, and Thomas, of Maryland, the Secretary of the Treasury. In the
course of the month five Southern States followed South Carolina out
of the Union, and their Senators and Representatives resigned from the
Congress of the United States.

The resignation of Jefferson Davis was communicated to the Senate in a
speech of farewell which even now holds the imagination of the student,
and which to the men of that day, with the Union crumbling around
them, seemed one of the most mournful and dramatic of orations. Davis
possessed a beautiful, melodious voice; he had a noble presence, tall,
erect, spare, even ascetic, with a flashing blue eye. He was deeply
moved by the occasion; his address was a requiem. That he withdrew in
sorrow but with fixed determination, no one who listened to him could
doubt. Early in February, the Southern Confederacy was formed with Davis
as its provisional President. With the prophetic vision of a logical
mind, he saw that war was inevitable, and he boldly proclaimed his
vision. In various speeches on his way South, he had assured the
Southern people that war was coming, and that it would be long and
bloody.

The withdrawal of these Southern members threw the control of the House
into the hands of the Republicans. Their realization of their power
was expressed in two measures which also passed the Senate; Kansas was
admitted--as a State with an anti-slavery constitution; and the Morrill
tariff, which they had failed to pass the previous spring, now
became law. Thus the Republicans began redeeming their pledges to the
anti-slavery men on the one hand and to the commercial interest on the
other. The time had now arrived for the Republican nominee to proceed
from Springfield to Washington. The journey was circuitous in order to
enable Lincoln to speak at a number of places. Never before, probably,
had the Northern people felt such tense strain as at that moment; never
had they looked to an incoming President with such anxious doubt.
Would he prevent war? Or, if he could not do that, wou