SPIES AND SCOUTS IN THE WAR.
IMPORTANT HISTORY SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE GROUP OF SHERMAN AND HIS GENERALS.
UNION AND CONFEDERATE RAIDS AND RAIDERS.
WOMAN'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE CAUSE.
OTHER ARTICLES
THE FIRST UNITED STATES FLAG RAISED IN RICHMOND AFTER THE WAR.
HUMOROUS INCIDENTS OF THE WAR.
WAR HUMOR IN THE SOUTH.
INDIVIDUAL HEROISM AND THRILLING INCIDENTS.
REMINISCENCES OF THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN.
THE MEASURE OF VALOR.
LAST DAYS OF THE CONFEDERACY.
CAMP LIFE.
SOUTHERN SPIES AND SCOUTS IN THE WAR.
NORTHERN SPIES AND SCOUTS IN THE WAR.
IMPORTANT HISTORY SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE GROUP OF SHERMAN AND HIS GENERALS.
PRISONS AND ESCAPES.
UNION AND CONFEDERATE RAIDS AND RAIDERS.
WOMAN'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE CAUSE.
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| BEFORE THE BOMBARDMENT. |
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| IN 1865—AFTER ITS REDUCTION BY GENERAL GILLMORE. FORT SUMTER. |
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| DEFENCES OF WASHINGTON—HEAVY ARTILLERY. |
CAMPFIRE AND BATTLEFIELD.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY EVENTS.
CAUSES OF THE WAR—SLAVERY, STATE RIGHTS, SECTIONAL FEELING—JOHN BROWN—ELECTION OF LINCOLN—SECESSION OF SOUTHERN STATES—"SHOOT HIM ON THE SPOT"—PENSACOLA—MAJOR ROBERT ANDERSON—SUMTER OCCUPIED—THE "STAR OF THE WEST"—SUMTER BOMBARDED AND EVACUATED—THE CALL TO ARMS.
On the 9th of January, 1861, the Star of the West, a vessel which the United States Government had sent to convey supplies to Fort Sumter, was fired on by batteries on Morris Island, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and was compelled to withdraw.
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| RIVER GUNBOAT (A CONVERTED NEW YORK FERRYBOAT). |
The bombardment of Fort Sumter began on April 12th, the fort was surrendered on the 13th and evacuated on the 14th. On April 19th the Sixth Massachusetts regiment, which had been summoned to the defence of the national capital, was attacked, en route, in the streets of Baltimore.
Meanwhile, several Southern States had passed ordinances seceding from the Union, and had formed a new union called the Confederate States of America. Many Government forts, arsenals, and navy yards had been seized by the new Confederacy; and by midsummer a bloody civil war was in progress, which for four years absorbed the energies of the whole American people.
What were the causes of this civil war?
The underlying, fundamental cause was African slavery—the determination of the South to perpetuate and extend it, and the determination of the people of the North to limit or abolish it. Originally existing in all the colonies, slavery had been gradually abolished in the Northern States, and was excluded from the new States that came into the Union from the Northwestern Territory. The unprofitableness of slave labor might, in time, have resulted in its abolition in the South; but the invention, at the close of the last century, of Eli Whitney's cotton-gin, transformed the raising of cotton from an almost profitless to the most profitable of the staple industries, and as a result of it the American plantations produced seven-eighths of all the cotton of the world. African labor was necessary to it, and the system of slavery became a fixed and deep-rooted system in the South.
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| PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET. |
The self-interest thus established led the South, in the face of Northern opposition to slavery which might make an independent government necessary to them, to insist on the sovereignty of the individual States, involving the right to secede from the Union. The Constitution adopted in 1789 did not determine the question as to whether the sovereignty of the States or that of the central government was paramount, but left it open, to be interpreted according to the interests involved, and to be settled in the end by an appeal to the sword. In the earlier history of the country the doctrine of State sovereignty was most advocated in New England; but with the rise of the tariff, which favored the manufacturing East at the expense of the agricultural South, New England passed to the advocacy of national sovereignty, while the people of the South took up the doctrine of State Rights, determined to act on it should a separation seem to be necessary to their independence of action on the issue of slavery.
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From this time onward there was constant danger that the slavery question would so imbitter the politics and legislation of the country as to bring about disunion. The danger was imminent at the time of the Missouri agitation of 1820–21, but was temporarily averted by the Missouri Compromise. The Nullification Acts of South Carolina indicated the intention of the South to stand on their State sovereignty when it suited them. The annexation of Texas enlarged the domain of slavery and made the issue a vital one. The aggressiveness of the South appeared in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854; and the Dred Scott Decision in 1857, giving the slaveholder the right to hold his slaves in a free State, aroused to indignant and determined opposition the anti-slavery sentiment of the North.