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

[371] under Colonel Clayton; and the third was made up of Louisianians, Georgians, and a Florida regiment, the whole commanded by Colonel Gladdin. Beside these there were about five hundred troops at Pensacola, all Louisianians, under Colonel Bradford. General Bragg was commander-in-chief. “These compose the very best class of our Southern people,” wrote Judge Walker, the editor of the New Orleans Delta, on the 27th of April; “ardent, earnest, and resolute young men. They can never be conquered or even defeated. They may be destroyed, but not annihilated. When the Lincolnites subdue the country or the people which they have undertaken to subjugate, as long as we have such men to fight our battles, the spoils of their victory will be a blasted and desolated country, and an extinct people.”

Re-enforcements continued to be sent to Fort Pickens from the North, and a considerable squadron lay outside in the Gulf. In June, Santa Rosa Island, on which Fort Pickens stands, was made lively by the encampment there of the Sixth New York Regiment of Volunteers, known as Wilson's Zouaves. They left New York on the 13th of June, on which day they were presented with a beautiful silk banner by the Ladies' Soldiers' Relief Association. The insurgents were also re-enforced; but nothing of great importance occurred in the vicinity of Fort Pickens during the ensuing summer.

Wilson's Zouaves.

The attack on Fort Sumter, the re-enforcement of Fort Pickens, and the President's call for troops, aroused the entire nation to preparations for war. Although Davis and his associates at Montgomery had received the President's Proclamation with “derisive laughter,” they did not long enjoy the sense of absolute security which that folly manifested. They were sagacious enough to estimate their heavy misfortune in the loss of the control of the Florida forts, and to interpret correctly the great uprising of the people in the Free-labor States, intelligence of which came flashing significantly every moment over the telegraph, with all the appalling aspect of the lightning before a summer storm.

Two days after the President's Proclamation was promulgated, Davis issued, from Montgomery,

April 17, 1861.

an intended countervailing one.¹ In the preamble he declared that the President had “announced the intention of invading the Confederacy with an armed force for the purpose of capturing its fortresses, and thereby subverting its independence, and subjecting the free people thereof to the dominion of a foreign power.” He said it had become the duty of the “government” to “repel the threatened invasion, and defend the rights and liberties of the people by all ”