Fort Sumter fired on, April 12, 1861, and surrendered to the Confederates, April 14. The North awakened by the assault on the flag. Douglas standing for the Union beside his old-time. rival. Lincoln's call for an extra session of Congress and 75,000 volunteers, April 15. A quick response from the free states. Lincoln's offer of the command of the Union army to Robert E. Lee, April 18. Resignation of southern army officers. — The Sixth Massachusetts Regiment mobbed in the streets of Baltimore, April 19.—Washington cut off and in peril. -Lincoln's anxious week, waiting for the defenders of the capital. Dependent on untried officials. His first diplomatic experience. Revising Seward's imprudent despatch to London, May 21. Death of Douglas, June 3. — The two armies in their first battle at Bull Run, July 21. The rout of the Union forces. - Lincoln's calmness and courage.

"BOTH parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came." - ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

The shell from the Confederate battery at Charleston which tore a path of fire across the gray sky of an April dawn, marked the opening scene in the tragedy of the great war between the states. Wild cheers rang from the crowded shore, and when the earliest rays of the sun gleamed on the folds of

Sumter's flag, there was not a friendly eye to greet it from the mainland. Out at the mouth of the harbor the two relief ships which Lincoln had despatched with food, stood helpless spectators of the one-sided duel, having arrived too late to succor the one hundred and twenty-eight men of the devoted garrison. Their coming had been but the signal for the attack.

All through the hours of that evil Friday, the guns of Charleston rained their hissing iron upon the island fort, and the startling echoes of their sullen boom rolled over the land. The hesitant North sprang to its feet with clenched fists. The people of the free states felt that their efforts to avoid a fight had been mistaken for cowardice.

Parties and factions were fused in a fiery glow of patriotism. Argument was hushed; doctrines and dogmas were forgotten. The sordid calculations of trade were banished from mind. Men for the first time learned from their quickened heartbeats how precious to them was the imperiled Union. The flag now assailed, was drawn from its long neglect and unfurled by loyal hands from thousands of windows. The nation awoke.

In Washington, the leaders swarmed to the White House and were steadied by Lincoln's coolness. They found him grave, but not cast down. With

out bluster or boastfulness, he was confidently turning to the need of the hour. The cabinet met, and, like the North, it was no longer divided, although its members did not agree as to the seriousness of the situation. Seward predicted the trouble would all be over in three months.

For two days the bombardment of Sumter continued, and then while the fort was in flames, its gallant commander sadly capitulated. With the honors of war, he was permitted to march his men out on Sunday and embark them on one of the relief ships.

Douglas went to the White House Sunday evening and was with Lincoln two hours. He read the proclamation which the President had prepared for publication on Monday, convoking Congress in extra session on the fourth of July, and calling into the army seventy-five thousand volunteers. His only objection to it, he said, was that it did not call for two hundred thousand men. The press of the country the next morning printed Lincoln's proclamation and Douglas's pledge of support side by side. As a still further service to the Union, the loyal leader of the northern democracy went at once to Illinois, delivering patriotic speeches on the way.

The two houses of the Legislature met together

at Springfield to receive his counsel. "There can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots and traitors," was the inspiring watchword which he sounded, while the veins of his neck and forehead swelled with the passion that possessed him. He labored on in the cause until sickness overtook him. As he lay dying in his home in Chicago, the air was vibrant with the footfalls of his old-time followers, responding to his last appeal and marching forth to the defence of the nation under the leadership of Lincoln.

The North eagerly met the President's call. In twenty-four hours a Massachusetts regiment was at the doors of Faneuil Hall, and in forty-eight hours the men of the Old Bay State, which was first in the Revolution, were in the van of the host that hastened to the rescue of the capital. The drum-beat of the Union resounded from every village green. Warriors thronged the paths of peace. Women wept and prayed and worked for their country's defenders.

The great wave of emotion for the Union, however, beat against the Mason and Dixon line as upon a foreign shore. Not one of the slave states obeyed the call. The Governor of Delaware, while refusing to organize and forward any troops, did yield to the President's proclamation so far as to suggest that those who wished to volunteer might offer their

services directly to the Federal government. Maryland demanded that no Union soldiers be brought across her soil.

The Governor of Lincoln's native state replied, “Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister southern states," while the Governor of Missouri declared to the President, "Not one man will Missouri furnish to carry on such an unholy crusade."

All the states farther south rushed into the Confederacy, until its flag was entitled to bear eleven stars in its union of blue, and Jefferson Davis's Secretary of War boasted it would wave over the Capitol at Washington in a few weeks. A full third of the officers of the regular army and half of the officers of the navy went with the South. Notable among the soldiers lost by this defection were Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, Albert Sidney Johnston, Jubal A. Early, Pemberton, A. P. Stewart, Braxton Bragg, Pickett, Beauregard, J. E. B. Stuart, A. P. Hill, and Joseph Wheeler.

Men like these were of the flower of the army. Lee was marked out by General Scott to command the Union forces. He sat by the lofty columns of the portico of his Arlington home, with the walls of the Capitol and the yet unfinished shaft of marble reared to the memory of Washington, the greatest of the Vir