to the Confederate
Congress, April 29; Moore's Rebellion Record, Vol. 1, Docs. p. 171.]

[Footnote 765: Official Records, Vol. 1, pp. 14, 60.]

The aides refused these terms, and without further consultation with
Beauregard notified Anderson that in one hour their batteries would
open fire on the fort. Prompt to the minute, at 4.30 o'clock in the
morning, a shell from Fort Johnson, signalling the bombardment to
begin, burst directly over Sumter. At seven o'clock Anderson's force,
numbering one hundred and twenty-eight officers, men, and
non-combatant labourers, who had breakfasted upon half rations of pork
and damaged rice, began returning the fire, which continued briskly at
first and afterwards intermittently until the evacuation on Sunday
afternoon, the 14th inst.[766]

[Footnote 766: _Ibid._, Vol. 1, p. 12.]

Within twenty-four hours the prophecy of Robert Toombs was practically
fulfilled, for when, on Monday, April 15, President Lincoln called for
75,000 State militia to execute the laws, the people of the North rose
almost as one man to support the government. "At the darkest moment in
the history of the Republic," Emerson wrote, "when it looked as if the
nation would be dismembered, pulverised into its original elements,
the attack on Fort Sumter crystalised the North into a unit, and the
hope of mankind was saved."[767]

[Footnote 767: J.E. Cabot, _Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson_, p. 605.]

Much speculation had been indulged respecting the attitude of New York
City. It was the heart of the Union and the home of Southern sympathy.
Men had argued coolly and philosophically about the right of
secession, and journals of wide influence daily exhibited strong
Southern leanings. Owing to business connections and social
intercourse with the South, merchants had petitioned for concessions
so offensive to Lincoln that Southern statesmen confidently relied
upon their friendship as an important factor in dividing the North. On
many platforms Daniel S. Dickinson, James T. Brady, John Cochrane, and
others equally well known and influential, had held the North
responsible for conditions that, it was claimed, were driving the
South into secession. So recently as December 20, in a meeting of more
than ordinary importance, held on Pine Street, at which Charles
O'Conor presided, and John A. Dix, John J. Cisco, William B. Astor,
and others of similar character were present, Dickinson declared that
"our Southern brothers will r