FLAG REPLACED ON SUMTER.

THE ATTACK ON FORT SUMTER IN APRIL, 1861.

THE FLAG REPLACED ON SUMTER.

"What's hallowed ground? 'Tis what gives birth
To sacred thoughts in souls of worth!
Peace! Independence! Truth!"—Campbell.

MMEDIATELY upon the election of Abraham Lincoln as President, in November, 1860, a predetermined plan of secession was entered upon by the leading public men of the South, on the plea that his election was dangerous the interests of slavery. In February, 1861, seven of the slave States having united in the movement, an independent government was organized, under the name of the Southern Confederacy, and Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President with great pomp, at Montgomery, Alabama; so that on the fourth of March, the day of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration at Washington, the flag of the United States was flying at only three points south of the Capital, viz: Fort Sumter, Fort Pickens, and Key West.

South Carolina naturally led the scheme of disunion, passing the ordinance of secession on the twentieth of December, 1860, and immediately proceeding to secure possession of the national property in the State, particularly the forts in Charleston harbor.

To prevent this, Major Robert Anderson, an able and loyal southern officer, commanding a small garrison of United States troops in Fort Moultrie, hastily removed, on the night of the 26th of December, to Fort Sumter, a much stronger but unfinished fortress in the middle of the harbor, hoping to maintain his position there till reinforced. But before this could be effected by President Lincoln, who had plainly advised Governor Pickens of his intention, a formal demand for the surrender of the fort was made by General Beauregard, commanding the rebel forces, which being promptly refused by Major Anderson, the order to reduce the fort was given by the Confederate government. On the morning of Friday, the twelfth of April, 1861, at half-past four, the first shot was fired upon Fort Sumter, which aroused and excited the nation, and begun the war of the Rebellion. For two days the assault continued, when after a most gallant defense by the little garrison of eighty men, Major Anderson was compelled to accept terms of evacuation. On Sunday afternoon, April 14th, he marched out of the fort with colors flying and drums beating, saluting the United States flag, as it was lowered, with fifty guns.

There was great rejoicing in Charleston. Thousands had assembled at the Battery, excited spectators of the scene. They exultingly beheld the banner of the Republic lowered, and the flags of South Carolina and the Southern Confederacy raised defiantly over the ramparts of Fort Sumter.

Governor Pickens, the bustling and blustering State executive, thus addressed the populace:

But Governor Pickens little dreamed that the discharge of his guns upon the United States flag at Fort Sumter would awaken such an outburst of patriotism as immediately followed all over the North, uniting the people of all classes in a determination to maintain the majesty of the Union, and vindicate the honor of the flag. How little he foresaw the mighty sweep and terrible devastation of the pitiless storm of civil war which now burst over the land, and which never departed from the soil of South Carolina till every rebel ensign was "lowered and trailed in a sea of blood;" till slavery, the cause of the conflict, was forever abolished, and the power of the United States firmly re-established on land and sea.

Four years had scarcely passed ere he heard the tramp of Sherman's army sweeping victoriously across the State, and beheld the once proud and haughty Charleston in possession of the Union legions. As he saw the starry flag again waving aloft in triumph, he hastened, with reluctant footsteps, to place himself once more under its protecting folds, thus renewing, in 1865, his oath of allegiance to the government whose authority he had defied in 1861!

A few months later, at the State Convention at Columbia, assembled under the direction of the President of the United States, it is none other than our reconstructed friend, Ex-Governor Pickens, who rises amid the ashes of his once beautiful Capital, and offers the following ordinance:

He had thus at last learned the truth of that ancient and profound maxim, that "he who would aspire to govern, should first learn to obey!"

General Sherman did not pause in his rapid march northward from Savannah, through the Carolinas, to make any