the drums beat "Yankee Doodle," and the order was given to march through the charred gateway to the transport that lay at the dock in readiness to carry them to the Baltic, on which they sailed to New York.
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| LIEUTENANT-GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, C. S. A. |
When they reached their destination, they were lionized by their enthusiastic countrymen. Steam whistles and cheers greeted their passage through the harbor; comforts, long a stranger to them, awaited them at Fort Hamilton, where they were greeted in the name of a grateful people by the people's spokesman, Henry Ward Beecher; and the newspapers sang their praises in one harmonious chorus.
When Fort Sumter was evacuated, it presented very much the exterior appearance that it did before the bombardment—a few holes knocked in the masonry were all that the comparatively light artillery then brought to bear on it could accomplish. Occupied by the Confederates after the evacuation, it remained in their hands until the end of the war. When, in 1863, General Q. A. Gillmore bombarded Charleston, Fort Sumter was reduced to a pile of bricks and mortar; but such a quantity of cannonballs and shells were poured into its débris as to form an almost solid mass of iron, practically impregnable. Sumter never was reduced by artillery fire, and fell into Federal hands again only when Charleston fell before Sherman's march to the sea.
On the conglomerate pile which constituted the ruins of the fort, a dramatic scene of poetic justice occurred on April 14, 1865, the fourth anniversary of the evacuation of Sumter. An expedition was sent by the Government to Charleston Harbor to celebrate the recapture by replacing the national flag on Fort Sumter. The ship Arago bore the officials in charge of the ceremony, and many invited guests, among whom were William Lloyd Garrison and the English George Thompson, leading abolitionists. A patriotic oration was pronounced by Henry Ward Beecher; and by the hand of Anderson, now major-general, the same flag which he had lowered in 1861 was drawn to the peak of the flagstaff, while Sumter's guns and those of every battery in the harbor that had fired on that flag fired a national salute of one hundred guns. The flag was riddled with holes, but, as the orator of the day pointed out, as symbolic of the preserved Union, not a single star had been shot away. Peter Hart, the brave man who had reset the flag during the bombardment, was present; and the Rev. Mr. Harris, who read prayers at the first raising, pronounced the benediction on the resurrection of the ensign of the nation.
The shot that was fired on Sumter was the signal for a nation to rise in arms. That Sunday on which Sumter was evacuated was a memorable day to all who witnessed the intense excitement, the patriotic fury of a patient people roused to white-hot indignation. As on a gala day, the American flag suddenly appeared on every public building and from innumerable private residences. Crowds surged through the streets, seeking news and conference. The national flag was thrown to the breeze from nearly every court-house, school-house, college, hotel, engine-house, railway station and public building, from the spires of many churches, and from the windows of innumerable private residences. The fife and drum were heard in the streets, and recruiting offices were opened in vacant stores or in tents hastily pitched in the public squares. All sorts and conditions of men left their business and stepped into the ranks, and in a few days the Government was offered several times as many troops as had been called for. Boys of fifteen sat down and wept because they were not permitted to go, but here and there one dried his tears when he was told that he might be a drummer or an officer's servant. Attentions between young people were suddenly ripened into engagements, and engagements of long date were hastily finished in marriages; for the boys were going, and the girls were proud to have them go, and wanted to send them off in good spirits. Everybody seemed anxious to put forth some expression of loyalty to the national government and the starry flag. In the Ohio senate, on Friday, the 12th, a senator announced that "the secessionists are bombarding Fort Sumter." "Glory to God!" exclaimed a woman in the gallery, breaking the solemn silence which briefly followed the announcement. This was Abby Kelly Foster, an active abolitionist, who discerned that at last the final appeal had been taken on the slavery question—the appeal to the sword—from the triumphant issue of which would come the freedom for which she and her associates had contended, and which they believed could come in no other way.
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| "WAR GOVERNORS" OF THE NORTHERN STATES. |
On Monday, April 15, President Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five thousand militia from the several States "to suppress this combination against the laws, and to cause the laws to be duly executed."
The response to this call was immediate, and within the week some of the troops thus summoned were in Washington.
While forts and arsenals were being seized by the Confederates all over the South, while batteries to reduce Fort Sumter were being constructed and armed, what had been doing at Washington city, the capital of the nation?
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1
CHAPTER II.
PREPARATION FOR CONFLICT.
DEFENCELESS CONDITION OF WASHINGTON—SECESSION SYMPATHIZERS IN OFFICE—VOLUNTEERS IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA—COL. CHARLES P. STONE—PROTECTION OF PUBLIC OFFICES AND GUARDING OF COMMUNICATIONS—UPRISING OF THE PEOPLE—RESPONSE OF THE MILITIA—THE SIXTH MASSACHUSETTS IN BALTIMORE—THE NEW YORK SEVENTH REACHES WASHINGTON—DEATH OF COLONEL ELLSWORTH—SOUTHERN MILITARY AGGRESSION—HARPER'S FERRY CAPTURED—GOSPORT NAVY YARD BURNED AND EVACUATED.
During the interval between the election and the inauguration of President Lincoln, a very alarming condition of affairs existed at the national capital. The administration was in the hands of men who, even those who were not actively disloyal, were not Republicans, and did not desire to assume responsibility for the crisis which the Republican success at the polls had precipitated.
The Government service was honeycombed with secession sentiment, which extended from cabinet officers down to department clerks. Always essentially a city of Southern sympathies, Washington was filled with the advocates of State Rights. The retiring Democratic President, James Buchanan, in addition to a perhaps not unnatural timidity in the face of impending war and a reluctance to embroil his administration in affairs which it properly belonged to the incoming administration to settle, was also torn with conflicting opinions as to the constitutional questions involved, especially as to his power to coerce a sovereign State. Turning to his cabinet for advice, he was easily led to do the things that simplified the Southern preparations to leave the Union.
It has been told that the regular army troops had been sent away from Washington, leaving a mere handful of marines on duty there. It became a problem for loyal men to devise means for the maintenance of order at the seat of Government. It being the policy of the Government at that time to do nothing to provoke hostilities, it was deemed unwise to bring regular troops openly into Washington. There was no regularly organized militia there; only a few independent companies of doubtful, or unascertained, loyalty.
The aged Gen. Winfield Scott was in command of the army in 1860, and appreciating that trouble would come either from continued acquiescence in the aggressions of the South or from a show of force, he advised the President to quietly enroll the loyal people of the District of Columbia for the guardianship of the capital. For this duty he called in Charles P. Stone, a graduate of West Point and