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Chapter 6: the call to arms.
The assault upon
Fort Sumter had doubtless been ordered by the rebel government under the hope, if not the belief, that it would not provoke immediate or widespread civil war. It is probable that they anticipated it would bring on military movements and measures of a local and defensive character; but neither the size of the
Federal army, nor the very limited war organization set on foot by the rebel congress, pointed as yet to hostilities on an extended scale.
The South well knew that the frontier could not be entirely stripped of regulars; they assumed, or so pretended, that existing laws authorized no call of the militia; and, judging from the neglect of Congress, at its recent session, to pass a force bill, they might reasonably infer that it would be difficult for the new administration to obtain coercive legislation.
Most of all, however, they relied upon a friendly feeling toward the
South from their late Democratic party allies.
Throughout the last presidential election, Northern Democrats had magnified Southern complaints as insufferable grievances, and predicted the coming revolution as a terror to obstinate voters.
President Buchanan even went so far in his annual message as to assert that a neglect of Northern States to repeal their personal liberty laws would justify the
South in revolutionary resistance.
The newspaper
