and it was as enemies rather than as quarrelling brothers, that the men of the North and the South rallied to their respective standards.

INTERIOR OF FORT SUMTER AFTER THE BOMBARDMENT IN 1863—FROM GOVERNMENT PHOTOGRAPH. (Presented to participants in Sumter Celebration, April 14, 1865.)

An episode which occurred about a year before the war, which was inherently of minor importance, brought to the surface the bitter feeling which was preparing the way for the fraternal strife. John Brown, an enthusiastic abolitionist, a man of undoubted courage, but possessing poor judgment, and who had been very prominent in a struggle to make Kansas a free State, in 1859 collected a small company, and, invading the State of Virginia, seized the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry. His expectation was that the blacks would flock to his standard, and that, arming them from the arsenal, he could lead a servile insurrection which would result in ending slavery. His project, which was quixotic in the extreme, lacking all justification of possible success, failed miserably, and Brown was hung as a criminal. At the South, his action was taken as an indication of what the abolitionists would do if they secured control of the Government, and the secessionist sentiment was greatly stimulated by his attempt. At the North he became a martyr to the cause of freedom; and although the leaders would not at first call the war for the Union an anti-slavery war, the people knew it was an anti-slavery war, and old John Brown's wraith hung over every Southern battlefield. The song,

became a battle-cry, sung at every public meeting, sending recruits to the front, and making the echoes ring around the army campfires.

So long as the Democratic party, which was in political alliance with the South, retained control of the Federal Government, there was neither motive nor excuse for secession or rebellion. Had the Free Soil Party elected Frémont in 1856, war would have come then. When the election of 1860, through Democratic dissension and adherence to several candidates, resulted in the election of Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the Free Soilers, the die was cast, and the South prepared for the struggle it was about to precipitate.

CHARLESTON HARBOR.

THE PALMETTO FLAG.

THE CONFEDERATE FLAG.

The day after the election, on November 7th, 1860, the Palmetto flag, the ensign of the State of South Carolina, was raised at Charleston, replacing the American flag. High officials in the Government, in sympathy with the Southern cause, had stripped the Northern arsenals of arms and ammunition and had sent them to Southern posts. The little standing army had been so disposed as to leave the city of Washington defenceless, except for a few hundred marines and half a hundred men of ordnance. The outgoing Administration was leaving the national treasury bankrupt, and permitted hostile preparations to go on unchecked, and hostile demonstrations to be made without interference. So little did the people of the North realize that war was impending, that Southern agents found no difficulty in making purchases of military supplies from Northern manufacturers. Except for the purchases made by Raphael Semmes in New England, the Confederacy would have begun the war without percussion caps, which were not manufactured at the South. With every advantage thrown at the outset in favor of the South and against the North, the struggle began.

The Southern leaders had been secretly preparing for a long time. During the summer and fall of 1860, John B. Floyd, the Secretary of War, had been sending war material South, and he continued his pernicious activity until, in December, complicity in the theft of some bonds rendered his resignation necessary. About the same time the Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb, the Secretary of the Interior, Jacob Thompson, and the Secretary of State, Lewis Cass, withdrew from the cabinet. On the election of Lincoln, treasonable preparations became more open and more general. These were aided by President Buchanan's message to Congress expressing doubt of the constitutional power of the Government to take offensive action against a State. On December 20, an ordinance of secession was passed by the South Carolina Legislature; and following this example, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Virginia seceded in the order named. Virginia held on till the last; and while a popular vote was pending, to accept or reject the action of the Legislature, the seat of government of the Confederate States, established in February at Montgomery, Ala., was removed to Richmond, the capital of Virginia. Governor Letcher turned over to the Confederates the entire military force and equipment of the State, which passed out of the Union without waiting for the verdict of the people. This State was well punished by becoming the centre of the conflict for four years, and by political dismemberment, loyal West Virginia being separated from the original commonwealth and admitted to the Union during the war.

During the fall and winter of 1860-61, the Southern leaders committed many acts of treasonable aggression. They seized United States property, acting under the authority of their States, until the formation of the Confederacy, when the central government became their authority. In some of these cases the Federal custodians of the property yielded it in recognition of the right of the State to take it. In some cases they abandoned it, hopeless of being able to hold it against the armed forces that threatened it, and doubtful of support from the Buchanan Administration at Washington. But there were noble exceptions, and brave officers held to their trusts, and either preserved them to the United States Government or released them only when overpowered.

In December, 1860, the rebels seized Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, the arsenal at Charleston, and the revenue cutter William Aiken; in January, the arsenals at Mount Vernon, Ala., Apalachicola, Fla., Baton Rouge, La., Augusta, Ga., and many forts, hospitals, etc., in Southern ports. By February they had gained such assurance of not being molested in their seizures of Government property, that everything within their reach was taken with impunity. So many of the officers in active service were in sympathy with the South, that it frequently required only a demand for the surrender of a vessel or a fort—sometimes not even that—to secure it. One of these attempted seizures