The History of the Civil War (Complete Edition). James Ford Rhodes
under the President's call for 75,000, her governor expressed the public opinion in a defiant refusal. Montgomery had already heard that Virginia was "in a blaze of excited indignation against Lincoln's proclamation."60 On April 17, her convention, by a vote of 103 : 46, adopted an ordinance of secession, which was to be valid if ratified by a vote of the people on the fourth Thursday of May.61 As the authorities assumed the result of the popular vote, they proceeded to join the fortunes of Virginia with the Confederate States. Having telegraphed to Montgomery the common desire, the governor received at once this despatch from Davis: "Resolution for alliance received. Proposition cordially accepted. Commissioner will be sent by next train."62 In fulfilment of this promise Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederate States, went to Richmond. Although he wrote of the "embarrassments and difficulties" in getting the arrangement effected, the common aim and sympathy were so certain that he negotiated a military alliance between the Confederate States and Virginia, giving the control and direction of her military force to Davis.63 On May 7, the Confederate Congress admitted her into the Confederacy and, accepting the offer of her convention (April 27), made Richmond their capital (May 21).64
The governor of North Carolina replied to the Secretary of War: "I regard the levy of troops made by the administration for the purpose of subjugating the States of the South as in violation of the Constitution and a gross usurpation of power. I can be no party … to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina."65 Before Lincoln's call for troops two-thirds of the people of North Carolina were opposed to secession;66 now, however, as speedily as a convention could be assembled, an ordinance of secession was adopted by a unanimous vote, and North Carolina became one of the Confederate States.67
On May 6, Arkansas, through her convention, passed an ordinance of secession with only one dissenting vote; soon afterwards she joined the Southern Confederacy.
In answer to Lincoln's requisition for troops, Tennessee's governor said, "Tennessee will not furnish a single man for purpose of coërcion."68 She did not adopt an ordinance of secession, but during the month of May her legislature made a military league with the Confederate States, and she became one of them, subject to the vote of the people which was taken on June 8; by a majority of nearly 58,000, they declared in favor of separation from the Union and of joining the Southern Confederacy.69
"Kentucky," so telegraphed her governor, "will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States."70 But he could not draw her into the secession movement. A drift of conflicting opinions held her in the balance, but Lincoln knew his native State well and, by tact and forbearance, he guided the Union men so that their influence continually spread until the month of August, when, in the newly elected legislature, they had a majority of nearly three-fourths in each branch.71
Missouri's governor was likewise favorable to secession, replying to the call for troops: "Your requisition, in my judgment, is illegal, unconstitutional and revolutionary in its object, inhuman and diabolical.… Not one man will the State of Missouri furnish to carry on any such unholy crusade."72 He had, however, a resolute antagonist in Francis P. Blair, Jr., a man of extraordinary physical and moral courage, of high social position in St. Louis and personally very popular. Between him and the governor, there ensued four months of political and martial manœuvring, but Blair won in the end and Missouri remained in the Union.73
The array was now complete. Twenty-three States were pitted against eleven; twenty-two million people against nine, and of the nine, three and one-half million were slaves. Each side had peculiar advantages.74 But neither section understood the other. If the South had known that secession must result in war and that the foe would be a united North, it is doubtful if she would have proceeded to the last extremity. It is still more doubtful if the North would have fought, had she known that she must contend against a united Southern people. The remark of Chatham, "Conquer a free population of three million souls? the thing is impossible," had become an axiom of the English race. But now the North confronted five and a half million earnest and brave people, supported by three and a half million servants, who grew the food and took care of the women and children at home while the men fought in the field. The North was contending for the Union on the theory that a strong and unscrupulous minority had overridden the majority of Southerners who had no desire for secession, loathed the idea of civil war and, if protected and encouraged, would make themselves felt in a movement looking towards allegiance to the national government. Lincoln comprehended the sentiment of the North and he never gave public expression to any opinion that he did not sincerely hold. In his fourth of July message to the special session of Congress he said: "It may well be questioned whether there is to-day a majority of the legally qualified voters of any State, except perhaps South Carolina, in favor of disunion. There is much reason to believe that the Union men are the majority in many, if not in every other one, of the so-called seceded States."
I have discussed this matter so thoroughly in my History that it is unnecessary for me to recur to it at length. Nevertheless, I may observe that on returning to the subject twenty years after my first discussion of it, and on going through the original materials again, I have been more firmly convinced than before of the unanimity of the Confederate States after the President's call for troops. The citations from William H. Russell's letters to the London Times and from his Diary, which I gave in my third volume, furnish an authoritative corroboration of the other evidence. This intelligent and fair-minded man, who sympathized with the North because he hated slavery and was convinced that the invocation of State-rights was for "protection to slavery, extension of slave territory and free-trade in slave produce with the outer world," made a journey through the Southern States between April 14 and June 19, 1861, and became convinced that the people of the Confederacy were united. Summing up the results of his tour, he wrote: "I met everywhere with but one feeling, with exceptions which proved its unanimity and force. To a man the people went with their States, and had but one battle-cry, 'States'-rights and death to those who make war against them!"
In spite of his supercilious criticism, Russell wished the North to win because he foresaw in her victory the destruction of slavery. But he did not believe that she could triumph. In April, while in Charleston, he wrote, "I am more satisfied than ever that the Union can never be restored as it was, and that it has gone to pieces, never to be put together again in the old shape, at all events, by any power on earth." In New Orleans, on May 31, he set down in his Diary, "Now that the separation has come, there is not, in the Constitution, or out of it, power to cement the broken fragments together." On the steamer on the Mississippi which brought him from a Confederate camp to Cairo, he met an Englishman who was steward of the boat and not averse to giving his opinion, which Russell quotes with apparent approval of the concluding statement. "This war," the steward said, "is all about niggers; I've been sixteen years in the country, and I never met one of them yet was fit to be anything but a slave; I know the two sections well and I tell you, sir, the North can't whip the South let them do their best."75
Mixed with the stern determination on both sides to fight out the conflict was a sincere regret that the Union should be broken. When