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tered in breach, and the agreement between them to that effect was promptly ratified by the Confederate commander. Thus unofficially was inaugurated the surrender and evacuation of the fort.

The President of the United States, in his message of July 4, 1861, to the Federal Congress convened in extra session, said:

"It is thus seen that the assault upon and reduction of Fort Sumter was in no sense a matter of self-defense on the part of the assailants. They well knew that the garrison in the fort could by no possibility commit aggression upon them. They knew— they were expressly notified-that the giving of bread to the few brave and hungry men of the garrison was all which would on that occasion be attempted, unless themselves, by resisting so much, should provoke more."

Mr. Lincoln well knew that, if the brave men of the garrison were hungry, they had only him and his trusted advisers to thank for it. They had been kept for months in a place where they ought not to have been, contrary to the judgment of the General-in-Chief of his army, contrary to the counsels of the wisest statesmen in his confidence, and the protests of the commander of the garrison. A word from him would have relieved them at any moment in the manner most acceptable to them and most promotive of peaceful results.

But, suppose the Confederate authorities had been disposed to yield, and to consent to the introduction of supplies for the maintenance of the garrison, what assurance would they have had that nothing further would be attempted? What reliance could be placed in any assurances of the Government of the United States after the experience of the attempted ruse of the Star of the West and the deceptions practiced upon the Confederate Commissioners in Washington? He says we were "expressly notified" that nothing more "would on that occasion be attempted "the words in italics themselves constituting a very significant though unobtrusive and innocent-looking limitation. But we had been just as expressly notified, long before, that the garrison would be withdrawn. It would be as easy to violate the one pledge as it had been to break the other.

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THE SO-CALLED NOTIFICATION.

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Moreover, the so-called notification was a mere memorandum, without date, signature, or authentication of any kind, sent to Governor Pickens, not by an accredited agent, but by a subordinate employee of the State Department. Like the oral and written pledges of Mr. Seward, given through Judge Campbell, it seemed to be carefully and purposely divested of every attribute that could make it binding and valid, in case its authors should see fit to repudiate it. It was as empty and worthless as the complaint against the Confederate Government based upon it, is disingenuous.

PART IV.

THE WAR.

CHAPTER I.

Failure of the Peace Congress.-Treatment of the Commissioners.-Their Withdrawal.-Notice of an Armed Expedition.-Action of the Confederate Government.-Bombardment and Surrender of Fort Sumter. Its Reduction required by the Exigency of the Case.-Disguise thrown off.-President Lincoln's Call for Seventy-five Thousand Men.-His Fiction of “Combinations.”—Palpable Violation of the Constitution.-Action of Virginia.-Of Citizens of Baltimore.The Charge of Precipitation against South Carolina.-Action of the Confederate Government.-The Universal Feeling.

THE Congress, initiated by Virginia for the laudable purpose of endeavoring, by constitutional means, to adjust all the issues which threatened the peace of the country, failed to achieve anything that would cause or justify a reconsideration by the seceded States of their action to reclaim the grants they had made to the General Government, and to maintain for themselves a separate and independent existence.

The Commissioners sent by the Confederate Government, after having been shamefully deceived, as has been heretofore fully set forth, left the United States capital to report the result of their mission to the Confederate Government.

The notice received, that an armed expedition had sailed for operations against the State of South Carolina in the harbor of Charleston, induced the Confederate Government to meet, as best it might, this assault, in the discharge of its obligation to defend each State of the Confederacy. To this end the bombardment of the formidable work, Fort Sumter, was commenced, in anticipation of the reënforcement which was then

1861]

THE FARCE OF "COMBINATIONS."

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moving to unite with its garrison for hostilities against South Carolina.

The bloodless bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter occurred on April 13, 1861. The garrison was generously permitted to retire with the honors of war. The evacuation of that fort, commanding the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, which, if in hostile hands, was destructive of its commerce, had been claimed as the right of South Carolina. The voluntary withdrawal of the garrison by the United States Government had been considered, and those best qualified to judge believed it had been promised. Yet, when instead of the fulfillment of just expectations, instead of the withdrawal of the garrison, a hostile expedition was organized and sent forward, the urgency of the case required its reduction before it should be reënforced. Had there been delay, the more serious conflict between larger forces, land and naval, would scarcely have been bloodless, as the bombardment fortunately was. The event, however, was seized upon to inflame the mind of the Northern people, and the disguise which had been worn in the communications with the Confederate Commissioners was now thrown off, and it was cunningly attempted to show that the South, which had been pleading for peace and still stood on the defensive, had by this bombardment inaugurated a war against the United States. But it should be stated that the threats implied in the declarations that the Union could not exist part slave and part free, and that the Union should be preserved, and the denial of the right of a State peaceably to withdraw, were virtually a declaration of war, and the sending of an army and navy to attack was the result to have been anticipated as the consequence of such declaration of war.

On the 15th day of the same month, President Lincoln, introducing his farce "of combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings," called forth the military of the several States to the number of seventy-five thousand, and commanded "the persons composing the combinations" to disperse, etc. It can but surprise any one in the least degree conversant with the history of the Union, to find States referred to as "persons composing com

binations," and that the sovereign creators of the Federal Government, the States of the Union, should be commanded by their agent to disperse. The levy of so large an army could only mean war; but the power to declare war did not reside in the President-it was delegated to the Congress only. If, however, it had been a riotous combination or an insurrection, it must have been, according to the Constitution, against the State; and the power of the President to call forth the militia to suppress it, was dependent upon an application from the State for that purpose; it could not precede such application, and still less could it be rightfully exercised against the will of a State. The authorities on this subject have been heretofore cited, and need not be referred to again.

Suffice it to say that, by section 4, Article IV, of the Constitution, the United States are bound to protect each State against invasion and against domestic violence, whenever application shall have been made by the Legislature, or by the Executive when the Legislature can not be convened; and that to fail to give protection against any invasion whatsoever would be a dereliction of duty. To add that there could be no justification for the invasion of a State by an army of the United States, is but to repeat what has been said, on the absence of any authority in the General Government to coerce a State. In any possible view of the case, therefore, the conclusion must be, that the calling on some of the States for seventy-five thousand militia to invade other States which were asserted to be still in the Union, was a palpable violation of the Constitution, and the usurpation of undelegated power, or, in other words, of power reserved to the States or to the people.

It might, therefore, have been anticipated that Virginia— one of whose sons wrote the Declaration of Independence, another of whose sons led the armies of the United States in the Revolution which achieved their independence, and another of whose sons mainly contributed to the adoption of the Constitution of the Union-would not have been slow, in the face of such events, to reclaim the grants she had made to the General Government, and to withdraw from the Union, to the establishment of which she had so largely contributed.

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