though with insufficient and continually diminishing means. It is an
astonishing fact that in this, the first engagement of the Civil War,
though much of the fort was wrecked, no life was lost on either side. At
length Anderson's ammunition was exhausted, and he surrendered at
discretion. The Stars and Stripes were pulled down and the new flag of
the Confederacy, called the Stars and Bars, waved in its place.

The effect of the news in the North was electric. Never before and never
after was it so united. One cry of anger went up from twenty million
throats. Whitman, in the best of his "Drum Taps," has described the
spirit in which New York received the tidings; how that great
metropolitan city, which had in the past been Democrat in its votes and
half Southern in its political connections--"at dead of night, at news
from the South, incensed, struck with clenched fist the pavement."

It is important to the true comprehension of the motive power behind the
war to remember what this "news from the South" was. It was not the news
of the death of Uncle Tom or of the hanging of John Brown. It had not
the remotest connection with Slavery. It was an insult offered to the
flag. In the view of every Northern man and woman there was but one
appropriate answer--the sentence which Barrere had passed upon the city
of Lyons: "South Carolina has fired upon Old Glory: South Carolina is no
more."

Lincoln, feeling the tide of the popular will below him as a good
boatman feels a strong and deep current, issued an appeal for 75,000
militia from the still loyal States to defend the flag and the Union
which it symbolized. The North responded with unbounded enthusiasm, and
the number of volunteers easily exceeded that for which the President
had asked and Congress provided. In the North-West Lincoln found a
powerful ally in his old antagonist Stephen Douglas. In the dark and
perplexing months which intervened between the Presidential Election and
the outbreak of the Civil War, no public man had shown so pure and
selfless a patriotism. Even during the election, when Southern votes
were important to him and when the threat that the election of the
Republican nominee would lead to secession was almost the strongest card
in his hand, he had gone out of his way to declare that no possible
choice of a President could justify the dismemberment of the Republic.
When Lincoln was elected, he had spoken in several Southern States,
urging acquiescence