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Updated: May 7, 2025
The secession movement had three distinct stages. The first, beginning with the news that Lincoln was elected, closed with the news, sent broadcast over the South from Charleston, that Federal troops had taken possession of Fort Sumter on the night of the 28th of December. During this period the likelihood of secession was the topic of discussion in the lower South.
The Legislature demanded of President Davis to withdraw Polk's forces, at the same time calling upon General Anderson, the hero of Sumter, who had been placed in charge of the Department of the Cumberland, to take active measures for the defence of this his native State. The mountain portion of Virginia belonged to the West rather than to the South.
Crash came the shot in Charleston Harbor and the fall of Sumter. Curiously enough two persons of Kentucky birth Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis led the rival hosts of war into which an untenable and indefensible system of slave labor, for which the two sections were equally responsible, had precipitated an unwilling people. Had Judge Douglas lived he would have been Mr.
"Bill Mink!" returned the farmer. "What in the world brings you here at this time of night?" "On a fool's errand, it may be. I received a letter from Loire, about an hour ago, stating that Geiger's daughter had volunteered to carry important despatches to General Sumter; that she had been on the journey some hours; and that I must overhaul her at the risk of every thing."
The next day, a day for ever black in the American calendar, witnessed the surprisal of general Sumter and the release of the tory prisoners, one of whom immediately went his way and told colonel Tarleton that he had seen Peter Yarnall, the day before, keeping guard over the king's friends, prisoners to the rebels. The poor man's house was quickly surrounded by the British cavalry.
Toward a little island set in the blue waters of Charleston harbor anxious eyes were strained. Was the flag still there? God alone may count the wives and mothers who listened in the still hours of the night for the guns of Sumter. One sultry night in April Stephen's mother awoke with fear in her heart, for she had heard them. Hark! that is the roar now, faint but sullen.
Though, for a brief time while the enthusiasm after Sumter was still at its height they appeared to go along with the all-parties program, they soon revealed their true course. In the autumn of 1861, Lincoln still had sufficient hold upon all factions to make it seem likely that his all-parties program would be given a chance.
This same scene, so far as city and nature go, was beheld by the crowds that swarmed East Battery, a flagstone marine parade along the seaward side of the boulevard that faces Sumter; that filled the windows and even the housetops; that watched the bombardment with the eagerness of an audience in an amphitheater; that applauded every telling shot with clapping of hands and waving of shawls and handkerchiefs.
Even in the deep sleep produced by opiates, she would shudder at the sound of Gilmore's guns as they thundered against Forts Sumter and Wagner. A faithful colored woman who had been a slave in the family from infancy watched unweariedly beside her, giving place only to the stern-visaged aunt, whose touch and words were gentle, but who had lost the power to disguise the bitterness of her heart.
These minor successes availed nothing in face of the disastrous defeat of Gates by Cornwallis at Camden on August 16th and the humiliating blow to Sumter at Rocky Mount on the following day.
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