nt, was therefore forced to agree to
evacuate the fort, which he accordingly did on Sunday afternoon,
April 14th, after having saluted the flag as it was lowered.(18)

There were men North as well as South who censured President Lincoln
and his advisers for not, as was at one time contemplated, peacefully
evacuating Fort Sumter, thus removing the immediate cause for
bringing on hostilities, and leaving still more time for compromise
talk and Northern concession. But the Union was already dissolved
so far as the seceding States were able to do it, and a peaceable
restoration of those States to loyalty and duty was then plainly
impossible.

South Carolina was the first to secede, and it is more than probable
that President Lincoln clearly discerned that the overt act of
assailing the Union by war would take place at Charleston. So long
as surrenders of public property went on without resistance, the
Confederacy was growing stronger and more defiant, and in time
foreign recognition might come. It was much better for the Union
cause for the first shot to be fired by Confederate forces in taking
United States public property than by United States forces in
retaking it after it had been lost.

The people North had wavered, not in their loyalty to the Union,
but in their judgment as how to preserve it, or whether it could
be preserved at all, until Sumter came, then firmness of conviction
took immediate possession of them, and life and treasure alike
thenceforward devoted to the maintenance of Federal authority. Of
course, there was a troublesome minority North, who, either through
political perversity, cowardice, or disloyalty, never did support
the war, at least willingly. It was noticeable, however, that many
of these were, through former residence or family relationship,
imbued with pro-slavery notions and prejudice against the negro.

It should be said, also, that there were many in the North, born
in slave States, who were the most pronounced against slavery.
And there were those also, even in New England, who had never had
an opportunity of being tainted with slavery, who opposed the
coercion of the seceding States, and who would rather have seen
the Union destroyed than saved by war. Again, long contact and co-
operation of certain persons North with Southern slave-holders
politically, and bitter opposition to President Lincoln and his
party, made many reluctant to affiliate with the Union war-party.
Some w