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

“ [214] people of Iowa are ready to pledge every fighting man in the State, and every dollar of her money and credit.” That pledge was nobly redeemed. One-tenth of the entire population of the State, or seventy thousand men, went to the field!

The people of Minnesota were equally faithful to the old flag. Alexander Ramsay was Governor. The Legislature that assembled on the 26th of January passed a series of loyal resolutions, declaring the Constitution as it was to be sufficient for the whole Union; denouncing secession as revolution; condemning in severest terms the treasonable acts at Charleston, saying, that when one or more States appear in military array against the Government, it could discover no other honorable or patriotic resource than to test, by land and sea, “the full strength of the Federal authority under our National

Alexander Ramsay.

flag.” It gave assurance of an earnest desire for peace with and good — will toward the people of the South; thanked General Scott for his patriotic efforts, and declared that the people of Minnesota would never consent to the obstruction of the free navigation of the Mississippi River, “from its source to its mouth, by any power hostile to the Federal Government.”

By a careful observation of the aspect of public sentiment in the various States of the Union at the period when a new Administration was about to assume the conduct of national affairs, as delineated in brief outline in this chapter, the reader will perceive that the great majority of the people were thoroughly loyal to the National Government, and desired peace upon any honorable terms. At the same time, it cannot be denied that there was a large class of politicians who, misrepresenting the greater portion of their partisans, seemed incapable of rising above the selfish considerations of party domination. With amazing sycophancy, they hastened to assure the Slave power of their sympathy and subserviency. At home, in speeches, through the public press, and sometimes through the pulpit, they clamored loudly for concessions to its most extravagant demands, and begged the sturdy patriots of the Free-labor States, who loved freedom more than power, to bend the knee of abject submission to the arrogant Oligarchy rather than raise a resisting hand to save the Republic from destruction. They talked oracularly of that phantom, the “coercion of a sovereign State,” and denounced every