Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/431



RESIDENT Lincoln was evidently prepared to hear that the Confederates had resisted his warships and that Fort Sumter had surrendered. His proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteers for three months to suppress the insurrection and summoning Congress in extra session on the 4th of July was promptly written on the 14th of April and dated as being issued April 15th, within a day after the delivery of Fort Sumter to General Beauregard. The proclamation recited that the combinations formed by seven States were too powerful to be suppressed by judicial proceedings, and it was therefore thought fit to call out the militia of all the States to the number of seventy-five thousand. The persons composing the "combinations&quot; were also commanded to &quot;disperse within twenty days.&quot; On the same day the secretary of war made his formal requisition for three months militia on the governors, assigning to each the quota of his State. Fort Sumter was surrendered on Saturday the i3th, evacuated on Sunday the i4th, on Monday the i5th these documents were spread throughout the country by the press, and on Wednesday troops were put in motion toward Washington. This extraordinary celerity is evidence of the well-devised plan to produce an issue on which coercion