declaration that "The God of battles is always on the side of the
heaviest battalions." Yet, so believing, President Lincoln exerted
himself in all possible ways to mollify the South. His assurances,
however, were far from satisfying the Conspirators. They never had been
satisfied with anything in the shape of concession. They never would
be. They had been dissatisfied with and had broken all the compacts and
compromises, and had spit upon all the concessions, of the past; and
nothing would now satisfy them, short of the impossible.

They were not satisfied now with Lincoln's promise that the Government
would not assail them--organized as, by this time, they were into a
so-called Southern "Confederacy" of States--and they proceeded accordingly
to assail that Government which would not assail them. They opened fire
on Fort Sumter.

This was done, as has duly appeared, in the hope that the shedding of
blood would not only draw the States of the Southern Confederacy more
closely together in their common cause, and prevent the return of any of
them to their old allegiance, but also to so influence the wavering
allegiance to the Union, of the Border States, as to strengthen that
Confederacy and equivalently weaken that Union, by their Secession.

Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, of the Border States
that were wavering, were thus gathered into the Confederate fold, by
this policy of blood-spilling--carried bodily thither, by a desperate
and frenzied minority, against the wishes of a patriotic majority.

Virginia, especially, was a great accession to the Rebel cause. She
brought to it the prestige of her great name. To secure the active
cooperation of "staid old Virginia," "the Mother of Statesmen," in the