t to the loyal people, in property destroyed, etc.,
was at least equal to seven billions more. Fairly estimated, slaves
not considered, the people of the seceding States expended and lost
in the prosecution and devastations of the war more than double
the expenditures and losses of the North; imagination cannot compass
or language portray the suffering and sorrow, agony and despair,
which pervaded the whole land. All this to settle the momentous
question, whether or not human slavery should be fundamental as a
domestic, social, and political institution.

Thus far slavery has been our theme, and the war for the suppression
of the Rebellion only incidentally referred to, but in succeeding
chapters slavery will only be incidentally referred to, and the
war will have such attention as the scope of the narrative permits.

(124) _Life of Seward_, vol. i., p. 672.

(125) A. Lincoln, _Complete Works_, vol. i., pp. 215, 240, 251.

(126) Seward's _Works_, vol. iv, p. 289.

(127) _Hist. U. S._ (Rhodes), vol. i, p. 469.

(128) _Life of Parker_ (Weiss), vol. ii., p. 172-4 (406).

(129) _Civil War in America_ (Draper), vol. i, 565-6.

(130) Speech of Henry Winter Davis, House of Representatives, Aug.
7, 1856.

(131) Zachariah Chandler, 1860.

CHAPTER II
Sumter Fired on--Seizure by Confederates of Arms, Arsenals, and
Forts--Disloyalty of Army and Navy Officers--Proclamation of Lincoln
for Seventy-Five Thousand Militia, and Preparation for War on Both
Sides

The _Star of the West_, a merchant vessel, was sent from New York,
with the reluctant consent of President Buchanan, by Lieutenant-
General Winfield Scott, Commander-in-Chief of the army, to carry
re-enforcements and provisions to Fort Sumter. As this vessel
attempted to enter Charleston harbor (January 9, 1861) a shot was
fired across its bows which turned it back, and its mission failed.
"Slapped in the mouth" was the opprobrious epithet used to express
this insult to the United States. This was not the shot that
summoned the North to arms. It was, however, the first angry gun
fired by a citizen of the Union against his country's flag, and it
announced the dawn of civil war. When this shot was fired, only
South Carolina had passed an Ordinance of Secession; the Confederate
States were not yet formed.

On the night of December 26, 1860, Major Robert Anderson, in command
of the land forces, forts, and defences at Charleston, South
Carolina, being threatene