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

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[140] On the very day that Sumter capitulated, Mr. Lincoln, in reply to the delegates from Virginia, who, in their turn, had united in a request for the surrender of that fort, defined the duties imposed upon him by the Constitution and the will of the people who had elected him. He did not wish to interfere with the local affairs of the rebel States, but he would protect, by force if necessary, the rights with which the central government was invested in virtue of the Federal compact; he would not give up the forts, nor renounce the custom-house duties, which he alone had a right to collect all along the coast of the United States, and he would close up the Federal post-offices throughout the rebel States. When he heard of the attack and capture of Sumter, he did not wait for the explosion of popular indignation which that hostile act would produce in the North. He immediately called an extra session of Congress to meet on the 4th of July; and making use of the powers vested in him, he issued a call for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the national cause. His proclamation, addressed to the governors of all the States that had not yet joined the rebellion, fixed the contingent that each State was to furnish. The levies of volunteers were not made directly by the government at Washington; their enlistment and organization were left to the care of each State. It was a means to try their fidelity, and to distinguish the earnest supporters of the Constitution from its secret enemies.

The replies to this proclamation were not delayed. All the free States protested their attachment to the Union, and immediately took the necessary steps to raise a much larger force than the contingents required of them; finding themselves sustained and directed by the central power, which clearly pointed out to them where the common danger lay and what was the duty of every man, the people of the North rushed to arms with a degree of unanimity which never abated afterwards.

The slave States, on the contrary, utterly refused to co-operate in the national defence, while the seceders, availing themselves of this pretext, made a last effort to force them into the rebellion, in the name of the sovereignty of the States, which, they said, had been ignored by the President. They succeeded in almost every State, thanks to the intimidation used towards the few Union