There was no longer room for doubt, hesitation, concession, or
compromise. Without awaiting the arrival of the ships that were bringing
provisions to Anderson's starving garrison, the hostile Charleston
batteries had opened their fire on the fort by the formal order of the
Confederate government, and peaceable secession was, without
provocation, changed to active war. The rebels gained possession of
Charleston harbor; but their mode of obtaining it awakened the
patriotism of the American people to a stern determination that the
insult to the national authority and flag should be redressed, and the
unrighteous experiment of a rival government founded on slavery as its
corner-stone should never succeed. Under the conflict thus begun the
long-tolerated barbarous institution itself was destined ignobly to
perish.
On his journey from Springfield to Washington Mr. Lincoln had said that,
devoted as he was to peace, he might find it necessary "to put the foot
down firmly." That time had now come. On the morning of April 15, 1861,
the leading newspapers of the country printed the President's
proclamation reciting that, whereas the laws of the United States were
opposed and the execution thereof obstructed in the States of South
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas,
by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of
judicial proceedings, the militia of the several States of the Union, to
the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, was called forth to
suppress said combinations and cause the laws to be duly executed.
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