Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[122] the reasons for such action. Davis said that the Secretary of War had recommended an increase of the appropriation for arming the militia of the country, and he thought it best for volunteers to have arms made by the Government, so that, in case of war, the weapons would all be uniform. Fessenden offered an amendment, that would deprive the bill of its power to do mischief, but it was lost. The bill was finally adopted by the Senate,

March 26, 1860.

by a strict party vote, twenty-nine supporters of the Administration voting in the affirmative, and eighteen of the opposition voting in the negative. During the debate, Davis took the high State Supremacy ground, that the militia of the States were not a part of the militia of the United States. The bill was smothered in the House of Representatives.

The conspirators were not to be foiled. By a stretch of authority given in the law of March 3, 1825, authorizing the Secretary of War to sell arms, ammunition, and other military stores, which should be found unsuitable for the public service, Floyd sold to States and individuals over thirty-one thou. sand muskets, altered from flint to percussion, for two dollars and fifty cents each.¹ On the very day when Major Anderson dispatched his letter above cited to the Adjutant-General,

November 24.

Floyd sold ten thousand of these muskets to G. B. Lamar, of Georgia; and only eight days before,

November 16.

he sold five thousand of them to the State of Virginia. With a knowledge of these facts, the Mobile Advertiser, one of the principal organs of the conspirators in Alabama, said, exultingly:--“During the past year, one hundred and thirty-five thousand four hundred and thirty muskets have been quietly transferred from the Northern arsenal at Springfield alone to those in the Southern States. We are much obliged to Secretary Floyd for the foresight he has thus displayed, in disarming the North and equipping the South for this emergency.² There is no telling the quantity of arms and munitions which were sent South from other arsenals. There is no doubt but that every man in the South who can carry a gun can now be supplied from private or public sources. The Springfield contribution alone would arm all the militia-men of Alabama and Mississippi.” A Virginia historian of the war makes a similar boast, and says :--“Adding to these the number of arms distributed by the Federal Government to the States in preceding years of our history, and those purchased by the States and citizens, it was safely estimated that the South entered upon the war with one hundred and fifty thousand small arms of the most approved modern pattern, and the best in the world.” ³ General Scott afterward asserted⁴ that “Rhode Island, ”