There was a Sunday of intense brooding all over the land. Next morning, April 15, came a proclamation from the President. The laws of the United States, it declared, were opposed and their execution obstructed in seven States, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings; and the militia of the States, to the number of 75,000 were called to arms for three months to suppress the combinations and cause the laws to be duly executed.
The North rose as one man to the call. Party divisions were forgotten. Douglas went to the President and pledged his support. Regiments from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts hurried to the capital. Every Northern State hastened to fill its assigned quota of militia. No less promptly the South rallied to defend the seceding States from invasion. The Virginia convention voted Secession two days after the President's proclamation, and the people's vote ratified it by six to one. North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas joined the Confederacy. Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, wavered and were distracted, but as State organizations remained in the Union, while their populations divided.
Constitutional logic, argumentation, distinctions between holding the national property and invasion, all vanished in the fierce breath of war. Between union and disunion, argument was exhausted, and the issue was to be tried out by force. In a day a great peaceful people resolved itself into two hostile armies.
At the outbreak of war, what the Northerner saw confronting him was an organized attempt to overthrow the government and break up the nation in the interest of slavery. This as the essential fact took form in the circle of fire let loose on a beleaguered fort, and the Stars and Stripes lowered before an overwhelming force. Close following came the menace against the national capital, for Washington was believed to be in imminent peril. A Massachusetts regiment marching to its relief was assailed by the populace of Baltimore; communication was cut; and the city which was the centre and symbol of the national life seemed stretching her hands in appeal to the country's faithful sons. To the conscience, the heart, the imagination of the North, it was a war of national self-defense,--a holy war.