HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES CHAPTER XVII A RECAPITULATION of the salient events of the year ending with the spring of 1862 will be useful. April 12, 1861, the Confederate government began the war by the bombardment of Fort Sumter. The Northern and Southern people, who had confronted one another since the election of Lincoln, now prepared for conflict. The appeal to arms to try the cause which Congress had failed to settle by compromise met with a vigorous response from the North and from the South. Both organized armies. The parties to the war were, on the one hand, the Union, composed of twenty-three States with twenty-two million people, and, on the other hand, the Southern Confederacy, made up of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, eleven States in all, with a population of nine million. The cause of the war was slav ery: the South fought to preserve and extend it; the North fought to repress and further restrict it. The real object was avowed on neither side. The North went into battle with the preservation of the Union blazoned on its banner, the South with resistance to subjugation. There was a meas ure of truth in each battle-cry. The North denied the right of secession, the South resolved to exercise it; and since there was substantial unanimity in the Confederate States, the war became one of conquest to be carried on by the invasion of the South by Northern soldiers. Three months went by while the armies were being organized. July 21, 1861, 29,000 Union soldiers and 30,000 Confederates met in battle at Bull Run, Virginia: the Union army was signally defeated. With no signs of discouragement and with unabated enthusiasm, the North rose up again. In October the Confederate troops defeated the Federals at Ball's Bluff on the upper Potomac ; this victory following the battle of Bull Run aroused in the Southerners a well-sustained confidence that they would in the end win their independence. But fortune turned, and the United States gained victories. In November, 1861, Port Royal, South Carolina, was taken, and with the new year Federal successes followed swiftly. General George H. Thomas overcame the Confederates at Mill Spring, Kentucky. General Burnside and Commodore Goldsborough took Roanoke Island, North Carolina. Flag-officer Foote captured Fort Henry. Grant, after one of the truly decisive battles of the war, forced the surrender of Fort Donelson on the 16th day of February, 1862, and seven weeks later repelled at Shiloh the northward advance of the Confederates, which was designed to retrieve their loss of Forts Henry and Donelson. Curtis drove the Confederates out of Missouri. Pope captured Island No. 10, and Farragut took New Orleans. Congress prohibited slavery in the Territories, abolished it in the District of Columbia, and, on the initiative and recommendation of President Lincoln, offered the slave States pecuniary aid in case they should take measures to emancipate their slaves. These events bring us down to April, 1862. In the last chapter the story left McClellan with an army of 100,000 men besieging Yorktown. Up to April 11 there was no time when the Union army did not outnumber the Confederate, three to one; moreover, the Union general had the |