Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

---

[147] from the North, the capital of the Union was soon wrapped in mournful silence. For some days the occupant of the White House was unable to forward any instructions to the people who had remained faithful to the Union; but their zeal did not abate on that account. Patriotism extinguished all party animosities in the hearts of most of the Democrats who had opposed the election of Mr. Lincoln. In the presence of the national peril they loyally tendered their assistance to the President; and breaking loose from their former accomplices of the South, they assumed the name of War Democrats in opposition to that of Peace Democrats. Their motto was the support of the Union, pure and simple. On the 20th of April, when tidings of the Baltimore riots were received, the leaders of the party—Messrs. Dix, Baker, and others, who were to become distinguished in the war—held a massmeeting in New York for the purpose of asserting their fidelity to the Constitution, and of imparting thereby a truly national character to the efforts of the North in its defence.

On the same day General Wool, who was in command of all the Federal troops west of the Mississippi, being without instructions from Washington, took the responsibility of forwarding to the capital, by passing round Baltimore, all the forces already organized he could dispose of. The way was opened by a Massachusetts general—Mr. Butler, one of the most distinguished men in the Democratic party; at the head of a few troops from his own State, he embarked on the Susquehanna River, proceeded down Chesapeake Bay, and came to anchor in front of Annapolis, which had been in possession of the rebels for three days. This little town was connected with Washington by a railway which made a junction with the main line south of Baltimore, thus rendering it easy to avoid the insurgent city.

Again, on the same day—April 20—the volunteers raised by the State of Illinois occupied a position in the West highly important for future army operations—that of Cairo, a town situated on a marshy peninsula at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. In the mean while, the Federal authorities determined to frustrate the intrigues of the insurgents' accomplices in the North by seizing all the telegraph wires, which the latter had used with impunity until then for their criminal purposes. Finally,